Bridges
by Dwimordene
Summary: 2007 movie On bridges, and the need to build them. PostMission City, Mikaela, Ratchet, Bumblebee, and Ironhide. Chapter 3 posted. Story complete. T rating for language.
1. Getting to Know You

**Getting to Know You**

The place was a higher end garage and bodyworks shop that mostly serviced imports. German imports. Mikaela looked around at the Mercedes Benzes, the Porsches, and a couple of Audis – all of them new models, all of them looking as though they had rolled off the lot yesterday, so pristine were they. She was almost afraid to breathe on them, and she certainly wasn't going to touch them – not with all the grease, oil, and dust that covered her head to toe. Not without a rag to wipe those gleaming surfaces clean.

Well, she supposed she _could_ get a rag easily enough: this _was_ a pretty sweet place for a grease monkey, and there were bound to be a million rags tucked away somewhere. So maybe she would borrow one and take a closer look at some of these babies...

Or maybe not. Mikaela grimaced and held a hand up before her face: she had never grown her nails and though she did paint them, she never expected the smooth color to last long before she chipped it. But today was a bad day even by her standards. And that was all aside from the little nicks and cuts and scrapes and bruises all up and down her arms. She looked around the garage, with its neat arrays of tools and open floorspace, then turned and looked over her shoulder. Beyond the tow truck, just a few long blocks away, smoke drifted between sky scrapers to the tune of sirens. Some of those buildings had holes torn out of them, and as for the roads below...

Mikaela folded her arms over her chest and shivered. She had tried not to look too closely, but some things you couldn't help seeing. Little old ladies lying unmoving in the rubble, business people in their suits, boys and girls her age, too... little kids... She remembered seeing that one fellow in Captain Lennox's crew go down in a spray of blood; she hadn't dared to ask about him, and she felt like a coward for it.

But weirdly, she couldn't feel too upset, either. Mostly, she was just glad to be here, in this _very_ nice garage, where you'd never even think anything had happened today.

Ok, maybe you would if you walked in and saw a giant chartreuse robot scowling over a giant yellow robot and eying the equipment lying about with a definite air of offense.

After the battle, Ratchet had gone straight to work. He had taken a quick look at Optimus Prime and Ironhide, said a few things in what sounded like a combination of electronic squeal and R2D2, and which had made her eardrums throb a bit, then stalked over to crouch by Bumblebee. After another quick 'conversation', he had set about undoing the cables and settling Bumblebee more to his liking, further up on the truck bed. He had collected missing parts and Jazz's remains, laid them carefully in beside his patient, and then beckoned to Mikaela.

"Can you drive to the following coordinates?" he had asked.

"Um, I guess. If you can give me a street," she had hedged, unwilling to say 'yes' and get some grid coordinates that might as well be on the moon for all she could place them.

Ratchet had cocked his head, seeming for a moment to be listening to something only he could hear, and then said: "One six seven west San Rio Drive – Kondrek's Body shop and Repairs."

And that was how she had come to be standing in said Kondrek's shop, just a few blocks from the destruction, wondering whether she should expect the Men in Black to come by and bag her again, or whether either of the other Autobots would roll up... or Sam. _And what if the owner shows up?_ she wondered. No doubt he'd flip out, and she wasn't sure how to handle that. Owners showing up were generally a bad thing in Mikaela's universe, and even though she supposed this wasn't technically illegal since they weren't stealing anything, still, she was nervous. _Of course, he probably flipped out awhile ago and took off_, she reminded herself. Pretty much everyone who could had fled the area – only Lennox's team had hung around to face the fight. And Sam. And her. _God, I must be crazy!_

Crazy or not, though, Mikaela was still here and feeling restless. Being in a place like this, surrounded by a small fleet of fine automobiles, all awaiting tune-ups, made her fingers itch, like she should be doing something. That was what her dad had taught her – "It's hard work, this job," he had told her. "You gotta get in and get your hands dirty, kiddo." Hardest working car thief this side of Vegas, that was her dad. But whatever else he might've taught her, he'd taught her to use her hands, not to let them idle. The question was: if she wasn't 'jacking cars or fixing them, what should she do?

A low growl caught her attention and she glanced back over at Ratchet, who seemed to be probing Bumblebee's damaged cabling and steel and wiring and whatever else an Autobot was made of.

_Snips and snails and puppy dog tails?_ She fought the urge to giggle inappropriately and instead focused on the medic's puttering about. Apparently, some of his fingers were lasers of some sort, or maybe welders, and he had his lights on – handy, to just be able to sprout whatever tool you needed, though it was a little weird to watch. If Ratchet were concerned about anyone walking in on them, he didn't show it and appeared to be taking his time as he examined the smaller robot, who sat very still and didn't twitch a bit. Mikaela frowned.

"Doesn't that... hurt?" she asked, after a moment. Bumblebee's head swiveled her way and blue eyes came to rest upon her. Though Autobots had faces and she'd noticed they did have expressions, too, sometimes, they were just unnervingly blank – or else she just didn't _get_ it, whatever it was they were trying to show when they looked at her sometimes. Like now. Maybe they didn't expect her to talk? "If I'm bugging you, I'm sorry – I can just head over -" she began to say, but Bumblebee shook his head then.

"No, you do not need to go anywhere," he said, and she thought his voice sounded a little off. As if he still weren't used to the idea of talking instead of dialing into whatever was on the airwaves.

"I just don't wanna get in anybody's way, or anything," she tried explaining, and this time, it was Ratchet who answered.

"If you get in my way, you'll know it," he said, without taking his eyes from his work. "Go ahead and talk – it'll keep him from pestering me." So he said, then muttered something that sounded rude even to her. Bumblebee's eyes glowed a little more brightly.

"Ok. Thanks." _I guess_, Mikaela added silently. She glanced up at Bumblebee once more and pursed her lips slightly, thinking furiously. _You're, like, two steps away from an alien – there's got to be a million things to talk about, so think of something_! But for some reason, she was drawing a blank.

Fortunately, Bumblebee saved her. "It would hurt," he said, returning to her original question, "but my system shut down those receptor-circuits some time ago."

"You guys just... shut things off?"

"Some things, yes," he replied. "If those subroutines are not themselves compromised or we do not need to move much."

Mikaela looked again at Ratchet, who was cutting away wiring and pieces of Bumblebee's metallic – 'hide,' she thought, thinking of 'Ironhide '– and then cracked her own aching back. "Wish I could do that," she muttered.

"Your species does seem to prefer a certain redundancy in its signal processing," Bumblebee said. Mikaela thought about this a moment.

"You mean you think it's weird we don't just shut off pain like you do?" she said finally.

"I have seen many other species. I understand that among organic lifeforms, it is unusual to be able to do so," Bumblebee replied. "So it is not 'weird,' merely not Cybertronian."

"Wonder why we can't," Mikaela said, suddenly regretting all those boring anatomy lectures she'd slept through. She'd taken the class because at least she got to dissect things, which she was good at, whereas biology was just textbooks and tests. Still, she'd found she tuned out whenever they _weren't_ dissecting things. Maybe Mr. Coerper had talked about the way human nerves worked while she'd been dozing? "Seems like a good trick to me."

"Organic creatures are more fragile than we are," the injured Autobot replied. "Your sensitivity to your environment enables you to survive it. As for a good trick," he shrugged, and Mikaela thought he smiled a little, "your sense of touch is far better and more acute than ours, which you seem to enjoy very much."

Mikaela cocked her head, trying to figure out what he meant by that last part. Then she remembered her introduction to Ratchet, blushed, and decided some things were better left unasked. "Yeah, I guess so," she said instead. "So... if you're not feeling any pain right now, are you feeling anything at all?"

"I can feel a break and pressure in places it shouldn't be, as well as no pressure in places there ought to be some," Bumblebee replied, absently pressing and rubbing a couple of digits just above the damage of his right leg, eyes narrowing. "And it is... well, you can always tell when you've got a short somewhere, and it's still unpleasant, even if not painful." He looked at her closely then, so much so that Mikaela glanced down at herself, wondering if she'd grown a third arm, but all she saw was her torn and sooty shirt. "What about you, Mikaela?" he asked her. "Are you experiencing discomfort?"

"Me? Oh definitely," she sighed, and cracked her back once again, then stretched her arms overhead, wincing a bit. "I'm really gonna feel this tomorrow!" She snorted, thinking of Sam flipping over his handlebars... to say nothing of falling off buildings into the not exactly padded hands of Optimus Prime. "Sam's gonna be even worse."

Bumblebee looked to Ratchet, who paused in his work and turned to stare at her as well, before glancing back at Bumblebee. "I hadn't thought of that," he said, sounding somewhat chagrined. He gave Bumblebee's knee a pat, then rose and took one long stride to reach Mikaela before he sank down to his knees before her. He touched a finger to the side of his head, gave her another long look, and said, "You do not appear to have any fractures that I can detect, nor do my scanners indicate any serious internal leakage, though I believe your heart rate and temperature are lower than I have observed among humans thus far. Of course, most of the humans I have observed have been in situations of extreme stress, and the drop is not so precipitous as to be beyond a deducible standard deviation for such things."

"Are you... was that, like, an MRI or something?" she asked. "You can just do that?"

"I'm a medic," Ratchet replied, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did among Autobots. _How would I know?_ she wondered. "You are showing signs of some disruption of internal fluid pathways – most of them close to your surface." A large hand reached out and caught her right wrist, raised it, and Ratchet ran a remarkably gentle finger over her forearm, following the discolored edges of bruises, probing some cuts she had gotten from breaking the tow truck's window. "I do not believe these are serious."

"They're not," she assured him quickly. "It's just bruising and a couple of scrapes."

"Bruising, yes," the Autobot medic rumbled softly, sounding for all the world like an idling engine.

"I'm ok, really," she insisted. "I'll be sore for a couple of days, but I'm not really hurt or anything. Just a little shook up and battered."

"Well, I will confess that my acquaintance with human physiology is hardly expert at this time," Ratchet said, releasing her wrist, and she felt a rush of warm air, as what appeared to be strategically situated vents opened briefly. "But," and he raised a warning finger at her, "you should submit yourself to one of your own doctors and allow him or her to confirm that you are well. Human tissue is not very resistant to blunt trauma."

"If I can get the cash, then sure," she sighed.

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, I mean, yeah, I'll go if I can. I just don't have the cash on me right now, and what with Dad in prison..." She trailed off, realizing that Ratchet's stare this time was not simply incomprehension in the face of unfamiliar words or ideas. On the contrary, he seemed all too understanding, and she unconsciously backed a little away from him. Not that she thought he would hurt her, it was just... well, he _was_ twenty feet tall and the last time she'd seen that look, he'd been shooting at someone even taller. "W-what?"

"You mean to tell me you cannot access a medic of your kind?"

"Not... immediately. It's expensive, and we're, you know, a little strapped right now, and it's not... uh, Ratchet?" she asked, backing another step. "Could you maybe stop glaring? It's ok, I'm really fine. I mean, Bumblebee's the one missing his legs." She gestured to the yellow Autobot, hoping to distract him. Bumblebee just looked on in silence.

"With the right parts and a little patience and cooperation from him, I'll have him walking by next week," Ratchet replied dismissively. "Bumblebee will be fine – _he_ has a medic on hand. You may _feel_ fine, but I am not the one to say whether you truly are so. You could have nerve damage that would not show on my scans or psychological damage that I would be unable to diagnose or measure. You should be seen by someone knowledgeable among your own kind!"

Mikaela stared, unsure how she was supposed to reassure him about such things, especially when her chest suddenly felt tight and hot, and her eyes stung for no reason she could think of. _What's wrong with me?_ she wondered, afraid she might start crying over nothing and right in front of Ratchet, who would undoubtedly see that as a reason to take her straight to a hospital or something. So it was to her vast relief that at just that moment, Bumblebee spoke up quietly.

"Ratchet? I got Prime on my comm channel – he says Captain Lennox said he'll make sure they get a doctor out to check Mikaela and Sam both, and it'll be on the house."

"On the what?" Ratchet demanded, turning to give his patient a glare. Bumblebee did not bother with English – he let out a brief flurry of sound, which must have eased Ratchet's mind, for the Autobot seemed to deflate a little. "Oh. Very good, then." Those vent-like things flared briefly again, and then he looked at her once more. A searching look, she supposed, and he probably was scanning her again, which made her blush.

But the Autobot medic did not comment on what he saw, only said, in a gruff voice that was somehow strangely soothing, "Nevertheless, Mikaela, sit down – I believe you have not recharged in over ten hours, and your energy intake has been low for your species and output in that time, if I am not mistaken."

"I'm all right," she repeated, more for herself than for him. Then: "Could I come watch you?" she asked, and when she got a skeptical (or she hoped that was skeptical, rather than angry) look, she said quickly, "I – I don't know if you heard, but I'm pretty good with cars."

"We're not cars," Ratchet grumbled, but he waved her over, and so Mikaela scrambled gratefully up onto the deck of the truck, Bumblebee incurring a growl and a reprimand from his doctor when he scooted over a little for her.

"So," she said, after a few moments, when Ratchet had resumed clearing away damaged... tissue, Mikaela supposed, "you're not cars. But you do change into them. How's that work?" She looked up at Bumblebee, who shrugged, his doors... wings... door-wings lifting a bit, like a damsel fly's.

"It just does," he replied.

"So you don't have to, like, think about where everything goes?"

"Nope." He shook his head.

"But you're not cars, you said. You're normally something else, but not cars. But it still just works like that?" she pressed. "And you don't feel, I dunno, cramped?"

"Well, it feels a little strange after you reconfigure to a new alt-mode," Bumblebee admitted, seeming amused by her questions. "But give it a little time and you get used to it. I've been here longer than the others – I'm pretty comfortable by now as a Camaro. And no, once you scan that form and confirm you can take it, you just do it. It's like walking or dancing or anything else that you do that you don't have to think about – it's all mostly subroutines. And – hey, easy, doc!" he protested, jerking his right leg back a bit.

"You want me to go easy, stop fragging standing in front of Starscream's bloody cannons!" Ratchet spat back sourly, then continued under his non-existent breath, "Ironhide's going to hear from me about that once I get him in here. Using that rusted out excuse for a truck as a shield! Ha!" There was a _snap-fizz!_ and electric sparks jetted up into the air. Bumblebee gave what sounded like a grunt, like a motor choking, and she felt him shift a bit. Ratchet brought a large, restraining hand down on the smaller robot's leg with a resounding _clang!_ "Primus, 'Bee, you're not a new-built, so hold _still!_"

Mikaela, eyes rather large now, looked from the complaining, swearing medic up at Bumblebee who, though he didn't quite smile, seemed on the verge of it. He just shook his head and lifted a hand, palm upward. So apparently, Ratchet was always like that, she read that gesture. Reassured, she went back to watching him. And after a few moments, when nothing else sparked and Bumblebee didn't move, the medic took up the explanation he'd disrupted.

"All Cybertronians have a transformation subprocessor in their lower cortex that links up to a series of neural nodes dedicated to topological calculating. Topology," he informed her, when she frowned slightly, "is a set of mathematical theorems that allow the transformation node system to track surface form and describe the limits on shifting from one kind of surface to another, among other things."

"Mm."

Seeing that his explanation was not helping, he sighed and looked at Bumblebee. "A little help with an appropriate human example, here?"

Bumblebee, after staring into space for a minute, replied: "Think of a donut."

Unsure where this non-sequitur was going, Mikaela just shrugged. "Jelly or sprinkles or – ?"

"Not jelly. Something with a hole in it."

"All right."

"Now, think of a coffee cup – not the Dunkin' Donuts kind, but the kind with a handle."

She nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. "Okaaay..."

"All right, now, topology is what tells you that those two things are equivalent, and so you can change from one to another."

Mikaela stared at him. "A coffee cup is equivalent to a donut?" she said, dubiously.

"Topologically, yes."

_Note to self,_ Mikaela thought, _do not stand under any Autobots with hot liquids in case they think a tire will do for a cup._ "So," she said slowly, trying to translate, "this math the subprocessor does is supposed to tell you what you can become?"

"Precisely," Ratchet said, still rooting around amid burnt out wiring. "Also, what shifts are impossible – some are ruled out automatically by a Cybertronian's internal structure. Bumblebee can't, for example, simply become a jet without significant reconfiguration. It's not within the range of specs he was designed for."

"Oh."

"Those aren't the only limits the transformation subprocessor tracks," Ratchet continued. "It also tracks where your mass goes and in what order the stages of any shape-shift take place."

Mikaela thought about this, then asked, by way of seeking confirmation of her guess, "So when you guys change, there's a reason it looks kind of the same all the time?"

"It isn't 'kind of the same,'" Bumblebee supplied, "it _is_ the same sequence, every time."

"And that," the medic concluded, "is what those neural nodes mainly handle on a local scale. They do it, so that we don't have to think about any of it. They're embedded throughout our bodies – like this one." Ratchet turned a helpful light on a rent in Bumblebee's left-lateral thigh plating, and Mikaela leaned in to look. It didn't seem very big – no bigger than a pager, and there were a few lights on it, a few grooves in the surface. She had, of course, no idea why, though some of the marks seemed a little odd...

"Those aren't supposed to be there, are they?" she asked, indicating a couple of the indentations that seemed a bit charred around the edges of the grooves.

"No, those are the result of damage," the Autobot medic confirmed, running a laser over the surface of the node. Bumblebee twitched slightly, which earned him a glare. "Don't even think it," he said sharply.

"Tingles," Bumblebee retorted.

"Well, it should!" Ratchet groused.

"What happens if one of them is damaged?" Mikaela asked quickly, seeking to divert another round of grouchy medic.

"Then you can't transform," Ratchet replied. "Block one of them from functioning, and the whole system goes down, automatically. It wouldn't do to shear off a limb just because your system couldn't account for it, after all."

Mikaela had to admit that that sounded quite unpleasant, though she couldn't help but smile a little at the incongruous mental image. Then something struck her. "But if you can't transform at all, then how did you manage back there, what with all the shooting?" she asked Bumblebee.

"The same way Ratchet gets his tools out, despite having a few dents in his chrome," Bumblebee said breezily, and this time, Mikaela was quite sure he was goading the medic, who gave him a decidedly truculent look. "What, doc? Those can't be doing you any good!"

"Do you want me to fix you or not?" he demanded, and when Bumblebee held up his hands in surrender, the medic harrumphed. "Answer her question, then, and let me work!"

"Weapons systems are a different set of nodes," Bumblebee obediently explained. "Just like Ratchet's tool suite works on a different set of nodes. It's one of the things we figured out pretty quickly when the war started. It's bad enough to get shot and be unable to change to alt-mode, especially if your alt-mode might get you out of trouble faster than running; but being stuck in one form _and_ without access to weapons?"

He shook his head. "Not anyone's idea of a good time, so they started designing and upgrading us so that weapons were on a separate localized system of nodes. Medics and other 'bots with specialized tools they might need to use even after they were damaged started doing the same. They're not as powerful, so you can do yourself some damage if you're unlucky or badly wounded already, but at least you've got a chance to do what you need to do, whether it's fix someone or take out the guy who dropped you."

"Huh." Mikaela watched, fascinated, as Ratchet felt about within the wound, seeming to be searching for something. Whatever it was, it apparently was eluding him, for his scowl became more and more pronounced, and she heard a sudden crunch – like aluminum bending, and then the truck bed wobbled as Bumblebee shifted. Ratchet swore, and after a moment, threw up his hands in disgust before slamming them down on the bed of the truck as he leaned in toward Bumblebee.

"For the last time, Bumblebee, if you won't hold still - "

"I'm not moving!" Bumblebee protested, and quickly released the now-heavily dented hoist of the tow truck.

"No, you're just wriggling like a live wire, that's all!" The two of them locked eyes. Ratchet gave a rather menacing snarl and ground out, in an entirely too reasonable voice: "You can either sit still, without shifting a single one of your wretched, grit-ground gears, or I can offline you. Which is it going to be?"

"I thought it wasn't supposed to hurt," Mikaela said, but neither of them bothered to answer, still staring each other down. She looked back and forth between them, then down at Bumblebee's leg, and the (relatively) tiny shaft or cavity Ratchet had been trying to access, and the itch in her fingers grew stronger. "Um, guys? If there's something up there you need to get at... I could do it." Two pairs of glowing blue eyes shifted her way, and Ratchet's left hand twitched slightly.

"We're _not_ cars," he repeated flatly.

Mikaela, however, bolstered by the knowledge that Bumblebee at least was not protesting, drew herself up a bit (for all that didn't matter) and replied, with all the confidence her dad's training had given her, "I know. Just show me what to do. I'll learn."

"It's up to you, Ratchet," Bumblebee said after a moment. "I wouldn't mind, though, if you think she could help."

"Quiet, you," Ratchet snapped, without ever breaking eye contact. Finally, however, he eased back and flexed his hands a bit, then gestured for her to come take his place while he tapped a few panels or buttons on the inside of one wrist. Of a sudden, hovering in the air before her eyes, was a glowing schematic, surrounded on all sides with strange characters.

"It's like a... a knock sensor. Or something," she guessed, narrowing her eyes slightly against the blue glare of the image.

"Essentially, yes," Ratchet confirmed, still sounding somewhat irritated. "It's part of his neural system and should be located just along the side of his primary rotators, but it appears to have been impacted back up into his secondary support shafts."

Mikaela, glancing quickly between the projected image and Bumblebee's damaged limbs, put two and two together, and winced. "I think," she said, guiltily, "that that might've been my fault."

"Not at all," Bumblebee countered. "You got me into position. If you hadn't, Brawl might've taken Lennox's team down and he and Blackout would've gone on to pin Prime."

"Yeah, but I could've had you strapped in better, and those cars we hit – "

"This is touching, truly," Ratchet interrupted, clearly impatient, "but if we could return to the matter at hand?" Mikaela muttered a quick apology, and fell to listening attentively as Ratchet described the hazards of Bumblebee's internal workings and what not to touch at all costs, starting with gears and ending with " - energon injectors. They should be capped – he isn't leaking – but I don't know what the effects of direct contact with human flesh might be, even for dried energon."

"I'll do my best," she promised. Ratchet appeared on the verge of saying something, but he restrained himself and gestured for her to go ahead as he turned off the projector and lowered his arm. Mikaela approached Bumblebee and bent her head a little to get a look between armor plating and the intricate bundling of gears, wires, and support structures. As Ratchet helpfully positioned himself behind her so he could shine light on the problem, she took a deep breath, then carefully reached under the edge of what remained of the upper edges of knee-guard plating...

* * *

Ironhide rolled to a stop behind the fire truck and after a last, quick sensor sweep, transformed. He grimaced – Ratchet had declared him dented but an easy priority 3 on his triage list. Walking wounded, but no serious injuries that required immediate attention. 

"Just don't grind your gears while you're waiting and you'll be fine," the medic had told him. And since Ironhide was in no mood to face the CMO in one of his infamous post-battle tempers, he had been careful, and even gone to the trouble of logging anything that felt odd or stressed for Ratchet's future consideration.

The future, however, could wait awhile longer. He had not come to the garage to see about pushing the dents out or anything of that sort. He had come because Prime had ordered him to recharge, and while he fully intended to do that, he wanted to check in on Bumblebee first. Not that he doubted that Ratchet could fix him – he had certainly repaired more serious injuries than the loss of limbs, and indeed, Ironhide had absolute confidence in the CMO's abilities. If Ratchet said Bumblebee could be repaired, then he looked to see their spy up and about in due time.

But no one who had fought a war as long as the Autobots had took even the most capable medic's assessment for granted. It was not distrust, it was simply respect for the tragic uncertainties of warfare that could snatch a life away without warning. The absence of a certain Solstice bore haunting testimony to that: Jazz, who would ordinarily have been the first to find his way to Bumblebee's side after a rough mission, was a palpable and painful absence.

And so when the human emergency team had declared their intention to go and seek out the girl, as per Lennox's request, Ironhide had followed along. It was not as though the garage were far, and since the municipal and military authorities had granted them leave to use the place, Ironhide had decided he might as well take them up on the offer. He could park in the back of the lot, somewhere out of sight, get in a few hours' recharge and be ready at hand should Ratchet or 'Bee need him for whatever reason.

As he followed the humans over the lot, he could hear Ratchet's familiar growl, but after a second, he frowned. He did not hear Bumblebee, but there was another voice – a very high one, sounding almost... cross. Indeed, as he approached, it became clear that a lively argument was underway:

" - but that doesn't make any sense! If _this_ is supposed to feed into _that_, then shouldn't that coolant line pass through _here_?" said a young, organic voice.

"You're forgetting that temperature regulation in a Cybertronian's body doesn't rely solely on coolant lines," came Ratchet's sharp reply. "And you make no allowance for individual tolerance and solutions – those lower 'door-wings,' as you call them, are heat exchangers and draw a lot of heat away from his core, so he needs fewer cool – don't touch them, for Primus's sake! Your own radiation tolerance, no matter what the spectrum, is laughably low!"

"I wasn't touching, I was just looking, and there's not that much warmth coming off them."

_'Bee?_ Ironhide sent silently through their HUD's electronic messaging system.

_Oh thank Primus!_ came the instant reply, and as Ironhide ducked down to peer into the bay, he saw Bumblebee sprawled on his undercarriage on the floor of the garage, head resting on folded arms, while Ratchet and the girl stood behind him and argued over a pile of damaged parts and loose cabling they'd extracted from him. The little yellow 'bot let his head loll to one side and blue optics unshuttered as he looked up at Ironhide.

"Ratchet?" Ironhide spoke aloud this time, aware of the humans clustered about his ankles, hesitating at the sight of a three ton Autobot bickering with a human a mere fraction of his size. Not that size seemed to matter much to her as the girl grunted and began reconnecting tubes and wiring, apparently unfazed by the wrath of Ratchet. For his part, Ratchet watched a moment, his arms folded just under his front chassis, then raised his head and gave Ironhide a brisk nod.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," the CMO said, and then noticed the humans. "Are you the medical team Lennox promised?"

"Ah, yes, we are... sir," one of the paramedics replied, a touch nervously.

"Good. Mikaela," Ratchet said, leaning down to lay a hand very lightly upon her back, "leave that for me to finish. Your medics need to have a look at you."

"I'm ok," she replied absently, as she carefully plugged a cable back into place. Ratchet set his motor whirring, an impatient sound, and she sighed. But she straightened up without further complaint, giving Ratchet a weary smile.

"All right, all right, I'm going!" she assured him. "'Bee – behave!" was her parting admonition. She ignored the solid metallic _thunk!_ of Bumblebee's faceplate against the floor as she made her way over to the waiting paramedics, who began guiding her back to their vehicle. Ironhide watched them a moment, then ducked his head and slunk into the garage.

"Don't mind me," he told Ratchet, and meant it. The medic harrumphed.

"Don't give me a reason to," came the quick reply, as the CMO bent swiftly over his patient, uncapping a laser scalpel.

"So," Ironhide said conversationally to the prone 'bot, "what's with the girl?"

"She's not just good with cars," came the slightly muffled non-sequitur of a reply. _Did my logic relays take a hit out there?_ Ironhide wondered briefly.

Aloud, he asked sensibly: "What?"

Bumblebee's panel-array flexed, then drooped a bit, before he settled his head in his arms, gazing up at Ironhide out of the corners of his optics. "She needed something to do, and Ratchet needed a smaller pair of hands, so he let her poke around in my innards." A pause. "She's not bad."

"And the anatomy lesson?" Ironhide prompted, frowning as he peered at Bumblebee's panel-array. "None of us'll be winning any second looks for awhile, I'll grant you that, but for getting tossed into a fixed structure, those don't look too bad."

His smaller comrade grunted. "They're not. It's the coolant lines that are a mess. And you know Ratchet," Bumblebee said softly, "'F he takes someone on and lets 'em into his bay, he doesn't do anything by halves. Think I've learned more about my insides – and yours, and Optimus's, and Ratchet's, and Prowl's – than I ever wanted to know."

"Huh." Ironhide craned his servos and caught a glimpse of the girl, sitting on the back of the truck while one of the paramedics wiped some sort of fluid over her arms. "So... it's been a good day in the bay, is what you're saying."

"Good as it can be, all things considered," Bumblebee said, and smiled sadly as blue optics strayed to the motionless silver form laid carefully out to one side of the garage. Ironhide said nothing; there was nothing to say that wasn't a curse, and he didn't want to slide back into that initial furious grief he had known when Jazz's signal had blinked grey, then dropped right off his HUD. Much as it hurt, this grief was better – less bitter. Bumblebee perhaps sensed that, and perhaps he agreed, for he simply lowered his head, staring at the floor.

For a time, there was silence between them. But then, Bumblebee's vents cycled, and he looked up at him again. "How's Sam?" he asked.

"Dinged up and leaking a bit in places he shouldn't, but these guys – " Ironhide stuck a thumb back over his shoulder, aiming at the medics " – said he wasn't too badly off, given everything. They said bed rest with them for a day or two, a couple of tests to be sure of him, and then they'd release him. Optimus or I'll go get him when that happens, since –" and now Ironhide reached and clapped a hand on Bumblebee's shoulder " – you won't be going anywhere for awhile."

Bumblebee shuttered his optics, optical ridges canting down in a pained fashion. "Guess not," he said softly. Then, even more softly: "Thanks, 'Hide."

Ironhide, who freely admitted he took a certain pride in being the bluff, blunt-fisted powerhouse on Prime's team, cocked his head a moment, then grunted and gave Bumblebee's shoulder a pat. "Don't mention it." He glanced down the length of his supine comrade at Ratchet, still busily plying his laser-scalpel over Bumblebee's wounds, and said: "I'm gonna go find a spot to recharge in before the doc starts looking for someone else to torment. You want my advice, you'll do the same."

"I will in a little while," Bumblebee replied. "Catch some sun, 'Hide, while you're at it tomorrow – even I can see your power signature's dropped way down."

"Oh, I plan on it. I hear they use carbon-based fuel here. Hate that stuff." Ironhide unfolded as much as he could from his crouch, wary of putting a crack in the ceiling if he stood up too tall or quickly. He backed ungracefully out of the garage and straightened up, hearing gears grind a bit. There was grit in there, and he grimaced as a few rubbed against parts they oughtn't to rub against. He glanced once more at Ratchet, intently at work upon Bumblebee, and thought mournfully of the impending tender mercies he'd endure at the CMO's hands. Then he looked over at the parallel scene of the medics who had the girl, who was clutching a blanket about her shoulders, at their center. He frowned. Hadn't Ratchet said something about the boy and the girl when they'd first met up with them? And 'Bee had sent them that log of his efforts to establish some good will relations with Sam that he could fall back on, to ease the shock of first contact and convince him 'Bee was there to help. That had been before Barricade's arrival had blown all chance of a gentle first contact to slag...

Now, there was a reason Ironhide was not in the business of recon and diplomacy. Build aside, it just wasn't something he was good at. Less hardy beings tended to come away feeling bruised from encounters with him, and that was on a good day. He was just as happy therefore to leave that sort of thing to Jazz and Bumblebee, and follow them at a distance along the nicely paved road they created between the Autobots and other species.

Still, he'd seen a lot of strange places since leaving home, and he wasn't without manners. He could appreciate a job well done, and he knew how to get on in a military unit – you learned or you died, after all. He thought of the girl fishtailing out of that alley and charging straight back through havoc to let Bumblebee get the crucial drop on Brawl. She had guts, he'd give her that – and not just in the literal organic sense. And now that there was no home to go to any longer, and Prime had determined they had a duty to stay...

Cybertronians understood the importance of bonds. The world turned on functional bonds, allowing everyone to do the work they were built for. Thus in strange places, you relied not on received bonds, but on the bonds you built, and if you didn't know how to build them, you learned quickly. And the first rule of building bonds, Ironhide knew, was that you started with something solid – you didn't build on air.

Which was why he said casually, "Think I'll go see how the girl is first, though."

Bumblebee and Ratchet both looked up at him with some surprise. Ironhide scowled. "What?" he demanded. "Girl did a good job today in a tight spot. Might want the status on her friend, that's all."

"So long as you go straight to recharge afterwards," Ratchet said after a moment, though the warning lacked its usual threatening edge.

"Will do, doc." Ironhide tossed off a salute and turned to make his way over to his intended target. It took him all of three steps, and then he was looming over her, staring down and trying to think of a good way to get out what he needed first to say. She raised her eyes and stared back, looking perhaps a little shell-shocked. Ironhide understood that human beings, like most organic lifeforms, were a good deal less tough than cybernetic ones – they didn't withstand shocks of any sort very well, surviving mainly by frantic reproduction of numbers.

Which presented him with a dilemma – he didn't want to lay another shock on her, but Primus, it'd been a long day, after a long night and a longer forty Earth years on the hunt since _Ghost 1_. He didn't have Jazz's head for interpersonal matters or his sharp memory as a special ops agent, and the little things tended to escape him... _Why is it_, he wondered, _that they can't have sensible names? Something that means something?_

Perhaps she sensed his trouble. Or perhaps it was just that she, too, had been graced with some manners to fall back on in troubled times. For after a moment, she lifted a hand to him, holding it out, and when he had taken it, she gripped a knuckle as firmly as she could, and said, "Hi. I'm Mikaela." And then, before he could say anything in response: "Don't worry – Ratchet said Bumblebee will be fine."

Ironhide stared down at the diminutive creature, and he felt a smile spreading over his face. "Mikaela, is it?" he said after a short pause. "Ironhide." He didn't squeeze back, but he did very gently and fractionally 'shake' her hand, as he had seen other humans do upon meeting. "Good driving today, girl."

"Thanks." She smiled up at him, began to laugh a little and suddenly, part giddy, part tired, but all delighted, if the shine to her optics were anything to judge by.

It appeared that the building was off to a good start.

* * *

A/N: Disclaimer: Don't own, don't profit, please don't sue. Obviously, this is the 2007 movieverse, with shadings of the original cartoon characterization playing in, though again, I must stress my limited exposure to the cartoons and my debt to other talented fan authors for supplying a certain character consistency that helps orient me where Bay's movie provides no direction. Ironhide and Bumblebee are probably freer of fandom influence than Ratchet, and it shows, I think, in a less distinct characterization of them. Plus, Bay's Bumblebee is a hard nut to crack, period. 

I've got a general idea that this story has one or two more chapters, and should focus mainly on Mikaela's relationship with the now homeless Autobots. However, on the chance that a plan certainly less than the best laid of them should go awry, I wrote this chapter in such a way that I think it can stand as a one-shot.

This is designed to be a character piece of sorts, but if you detect a certain fascination with just how these robots 'actually' function, then you've discerned the hidden motive. I like my fictional characters and cultures to make sense to me, and giant robots don't really make sense as they're presented. Mikaela seems like the logical character to give me an exploratory angle on Cybertronian physiology, which should also lead into ways this physiology might intersect with more interesting cross-cultural issues. Also, is it just me, or is she a little ignored unless she's with Sam around here?

Look up topology on Wikipedia for the idiot's guide to faking a conversation about how transformation works, as well as the traditional donut-cup joke.


	2. The True Meanings of Brotherhood

**The True Meanings of Brotherhood**

" – king up to Black Sabbath here on ninety-three nine, The Mountain – KMGN!"

Mikaela groaned softly and pulled her blanket up higher as "Paranoid" blared on the alarm radio. _Way too early_, she thought sleepily and reached out a hand automatically to hit 'snooze.' But her dresser, with its alarm clock, was gone; in its place was a... seat?

"Mmph, wha...?" she muttered, confused, as she cracked her eyes open to the back of a seat. Uncomprehending, she stared, then glanced overhead at the light panel, then lifted her head slightly to stare out the window at the back of a Bank of America. She was tucked into the back seat of someone's truck... and she had no idea how she'd gotten there or whose it was! She sat bolt upright, then hissed and cursed when her back spasmed. "Ow! When did I – where...?"

In the midst of her confusion, the car shuddered, rocking a bit on its shocks, and the engine turned over. "Mikaela?" Black Sabbath cut out as a new voice filtered through the radio system.

She froze, but then memory flooded back in a rush. "Ironhide?"

"Are you all right?" the Autobot inquired, sounding on the sleepy side himself.

"I – yeah." She shook her head, pressing her hands briefly over her face and counting to three. _Wake up, girl!_ "Yeah, I'm all right, just... how did I get here?"

"Do you not remember?" Ironhide sounded more alert now. Alert, and worried. "Should I call Ratchet?"

"No, don't bug Ratchet. I'm fine," she said quickly, and shut her eyes once more. "Did you come get me last night, or something?"

"No. Ratchet rapped on my window and called me back online. He had you with him – said you went into unscheduled recharge sometime after twenty three forty," Ironhide informed her.

_Unscheduled recharge_. Mikaela ran a hand through back over the braid she had made yesterday to keep her hair out of her face, grimacing at the greasy feel. _God, and I'm disgusting! What I wouldn't give for a shower!_ she thought. In addition to being sore and filthy, she had also keeled over on Ratchet, apparently. "Ratchet didn't, like, freak out, did he?"

"Not that I saw," Ironhide said, sounding not terribly concerned about the prospect. "But he couldn't access the lounge or the office without taking out part of the wall, and thought this form might be better shelter for you than the floor of the garage."

"Been in less cushy trucks, that's for sure," Mikaela said around a yawn. _C'mon, girl, time to get going_/, she told herself, and gave herself a shake. Then she frowned, leaning forward to stare at the radio panel with interest. "I didn't think you could program a Topkick's stereo with alarm settings."

"You wouldn't think a Camaro of any sort could shatter laminated glass with a pitch resonance coil," the Autobot countered. Mikaela's brow knit as she stared out at the lot and all the intact car windows gleaming in the morning sun. But before she could ask, Ironhide continued: "Ratchet told me to wake you in eight hours since the instructions on your medical supplies say you should ingest some three times daily." So saying, the glove compartment popped open to reveal a plain white paper bag and some papers.

Last night, the paramedics had cleaned her up and seen to all her cuts and scratches, checked for signs of internal bleeding as best they could, and administered a tetanus shot.

"We normally don't carry it, but every hospital in the city is at capacity, and most of them are dealing with overflow," one of them had told her, as she ran a sterile swab over Mikaela's arm and neatly injected the vaccine. "We're not taking anyone in that we don't have to right now."

In addition to the vaccination, they had left her with a double handful of single-dose packages of aspirin, a box of band-aids, and paperwork that Captain Lennox was supposed to fill out so she wouldn't have to pay for their services. Mikaela retrieved these from the glove compartment, then slipped out the door Ironhide opened for her.

"Thanks for the nap," she told him, as she shut the door firmly.

"You're welcome," Ironhide gave a rumbling, elongated reply, his motor revving momentarily in a high pitched whine. She could've sworn she saw his side-view mirrors flex slightly, and his chassis lifted a bit before he resettled on his shocks and cut his engine abruptly. When he didn't make any further movements or speak again, she snorted, nonplussed. Apparently, even alien robots didn't do mornings!

Nor was he the only one: upon entering the garage, the first thing she noticed was how open the floor seemed, and she soon realized why. Sometime after she had fallen asleep, Bumblebee, perhaps tired of being prodded, had wedged himself into a corner of the garage and was tucked up motionless on his side, eyes dark or closed, oblivious to her presence.

Ratchet, however, looked up from his work as she entered the garage. During the night, he had done some poking about the rest of the shop, it seemed, and had discovered how to operate the car lifts. Add a couple of stacked plywood boards and four bolts to hold them in place, and he had a worktable. She couldn't see from her angle what he was working on, but there was a growing pile of damaged and discarded parts on the floor beside him. She wondered if he had done any 'recharging' himself or if he had just kept at it the whole night.

"Did Ironhide give you my message?" he asked, wasting no time on 'Good morning.'

"Yeah, he did. I'll take 'em in a minute. I gotta go find a bathroom. And coffee, if there is any," she told him, as she made for the break room at the back of the garage.

"Make certain you take the analgesic with water," was Ratchet's parting admonition. Expert he might not be when it came to human physiology, but he'd apparently read the fine print on the aspirin packaging. Or else he'd downloaded the information – the print _was_ rather small and she could see him having trouble just picking up the packet, let alone reading it.

"I will," she assured him.

The water cooler at least was easy to find, and she downed the aspirin in a quick swallow. The coffee was Maxwell House, and it took some hunting before she found filters, but eventually, she got the pot set up and brewing before she nerved herself to face the bathroom.

Happily, it was no where near as awful as it could've been, so she turned on the faucets and set her bag of pills and band-aids carefully on top of the electric dryer. She hung her jacket on the door handle. Then, leaning over the sink, she splashed water on her face, rubbing vigorously before she turned her attention to the numerous band-aids and gauze patches stuck all over her arms. This was as close to a shower as she was likely to get today, for all she knew, and though the water pressure was low, and there was no help for her dirty clothes, she could live with the grime so long as she got the worst of it off her skin.

Forty minutes later, having made liberal use of the hand soap and paper towels, reapplied band-aids, and helped herself to a cup of coffee and a handful of peppermints that were likely left over from last Christmas, Mikaela emerged from the break room feeling more like herself.

"Morning, Ratchet," she greeted him this time.

"So it is," he replied, eyes narrowing as something sparked in response to his probing.

Ok, so maybe Ratchet was very literal at times. "How's it going?" she tried again, deciding that whether he recognized that as a greeting or not, it'd work out either way.

This garnered a low, resonant growl. "The damage is as bad as my initial scans indicated, but the repair prospects are worse than even I had guessed," he said, a little absently, as he zapped the something with a laser.

Mikaela sucked in a breath. _No wonder he's crabby_, she thought. Aloud, she asked worriedly, in a voice she hoped wouldn't carry to Bumblebee, "Does that mean you can't fix him?"

"Never said that," came the even-toned reply. But he did cease his efforts, and Mikaela cocked her head at the surprisingly open and weary look he turned upon her. "What about you, girl? You seem to be functioning well enough today for someone who offlined unexpectedly last night."

"Yeah, Ironhide said something about that," Mikaela replied apologetically. "I didn't mean to worry you. I probably should've gone to sleep earlier."

"Apparently so," Ratchet replied, dryly, and she smiled a bit. He grunted, but then tilted his head towards Bumblebee, and said, "I've got him on timed recharge – and _I've_ got the switch, so he can't pull himself out of it and shortchange himself. He's got another two hours 'til I let him up, which should be enough time to finish with the wiring and get the grit out of the damage zones. It would save me time if you could do that."

"Sure," Mikaela said, pleased with the prospect of something to do, and even more pleased to be asked. But then: "Or at least, I can do it in a little bit. I have to call home, or Grandma Lori's going to kill me."

"There is a lot of radio activity today, and it seems a number of receivers are down from what we can tell," the Autobot medic warned. "Are you certain your unit can reach the relay?"

"I guess I'll find out," Mikaela replied, going over to retrieve her purse.

But she did not test her cell phone's capabilities in the end. For in point of fact, she couldn't find it, though she gave the garage a careful once over. And although there was a phone in the break room, it was local dial-out only, and a quick look around the table and microwave stand revealed nothing that looked like a long distance code.

So Mikaela found herself stuck using the pay phone around the side of the garage. The phone on the other end rang only once before it was snatched up, and a breathless, tearful, "Hello?" came through.

"Grandma Lori?" Mikaela said, and then had to hold the phone away from her ear to avoid being deafened. "Grandma Lori, it's ok! I – hello? Grandma?" The phone had gone dead. Her grandmother had probably dropped it or hit disconnect by accident – she was known to do that when excited. Swearing, Mikaela dug the last of her quarters out of her purse and redialed. The phone rang once more, and once more was immediately picked up, whereupon her grandmother continued on in the same half-hysterical vein almost as if there had never been a break.

Thus began a rather trying conversation.

"Grandma Lori, it's me, Mikaela, I – no, I didn't know you'd been calling. No, I wasn't ignor – I'm sorry, I just – no, it's not stolen. It's lost. Yes. I suppose so, there's the warranty – " Beat. "Yes. No. _No_, I wasn't stealing cars! Grandma, you know I don't – Well, yeah, I _was_ with Trent on Wednesday, but he's a jerk, we broke up and Sam brought me ba – Sam. Sam Witwicky. No, no, Sam's sweet. No, he's not like that. No, you don't know him, but we're out here together – " A longer pause. Mikaela ducked her head, pressing a hand over her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I know I should've, it's just that I lost my phone. No, I told you, it wasn't stolen. How? Well... there was this fight just off of Third Street – "

_"Third Street! O my Lord, that's where they said the war started! Oh my God! Oh my God, Mikaela, my baby, my darling – !_" came the horrified shriek, followed by babbling, prayerful incoherence that threatened to burst her eardrums. Mikaela bit her lip and winced, and not just from the volume.

Grandma Lori was her mom's mom, and had moved in after Mikaela's mother had died. Well, specifically, after Mikaela's mother had died _and_ her dad had gotten arrested finally for grand theft auto. When it had come out at the hearing that her dad had ended up taking her along with him on his 'jobs' just because he didn't have, and couldn't always afford, anyone to baby-sit a young girl, Grandma Lori had packed up her bags and moved in, stoutly declaring that she would see to it that her granddaughter was brought up as befitted a young lady.

Under the circumstances, her dad hadn't been able to protest, and at least Grandma Lori's presence meant Mikaela hadn't had to move to Fresno to stay with her aunt. She had been able to stay in her parents' house, and even see her dad on occasion, and keep her friends. And truthfully, she did love her grandmother, it was just... well, Grandma Lori still thought her darling granddaughter should be wearing knee-length dresses and knitting and maybe playing bingo at St. Mary's on a Saturday night.

And Grandma Lori was definitely not 'up' with the technology. Internet mystified her; televisions did, too, if the remotes had more than numbers and an "up/down" channel changer. She couldn't figure out Mikaela's small stereo or believe that the radio alarm clock would ever work, and so was forever knocking on Mikaela's door a half hour earlier than Mikaela wanted to be awake. Computers were incomprehensible. She didn't understand Mikaela's love of cars at all, suspecting it to be some corruptive, criminal liking her dad had taught her. About the only thing she grasped was the cell phone. Cell phones she liked, at least in theory, because it meant (again, in theory) that Mikaela was always available.

In practice, that wasn't how things worked, and though Mikaela felt vaguely guilty about it from time to time, really – did her grandmother need to call her every day to ask if she'd brought a sweater or who she was riding home with or what she was doing? Her life might not be what her grandmother wanted it to be, but it wasn't _that_ exciting, either. Certainly not enough to merit the phone bills.

However, the outbreak of war on American soil against an enemy who, Mikaela gathered, was variously reported to be the Chinese, the Russians, a Japanese sect, Cuba (?), an American military experiment gone awry, or (according to stations receiving cell phone calls from beleaguered Mission City) giant robotic beings, certainly merited a phone call home, and at once. Had the technology failed, her grandmother could've taken that in stride. She expected technology to fail. But it hadn't, and Mikaela felt awful as she struggled to try to explain herself and her two days' silence through the half-sobbing refrain of "Oh merciful Mary! Oh Mother in heaven! Oh Christ Jesus!"

It took the better part of an hour in which every sentence ended with "I'm sorry," but Mikaela finally managed to get through to Grandma Lori that she was fine, that she was stuck behind a road blockade, that she was with a friend (who was not Trent – yes, she knew he looked at her the 'wrong' way), and that she had not had an accident, been abducted, or been arrested. That only one of those last four things was true was beside the point – she was fine, that was what Grandma Lori needed to know, and she left out any mention of the Decepticons. Or the Autobots. Her grandmother couldn't make heads or tails of a car alarm; there was no way Mikaela was going to attempt to explain that the aliens were among them and had taken on the face of GM's newest ad campaign, if only they knew.

The tricky question of when she might be home required some more creative evasion, and seriously threatened to reduce her to tears, for Mikaela had no least idea herself of when or how she might make it back to Nevada. But she held on grimly to her self control, and after hemming and hawing about closed roads and no car, finally told her grandmother that because she had seen some of the 'enemy agents' near Third Street, the army wanted her to stay about until they could hear what she had to say, which might take a few more days. She would call when she was slated to go home. Or when she got a phone number she could be reached at. Or every night, if Grandma Lori wanted. And no, she had no idea about the stories on TV. No, she didn't know anything about supertanks. Or weapons with artificial intelligence. Or UFOs. Definitely nothing about UFOs. Really.

That seemed at last to do it. Mikaela leaned her head exhaustedly against the telephone casing, listening as Grandma Lori prayed over her long distance, ending on, "Just come home, please come home soon, Mikaela! Tell them to let you come home – you're a good girl!"

"I love you, too, Grandma," Mikaela murmured, waiting 'til she heard the reluctant _click! _of disconnection before she hung up the receiver. And then she sank quietly down beneath the pay phone, drew her knees up to her chest, and just shook while the tears rolled down her face.

She wasn't sure how long she sat huddled there, but it seemed only a little while later that a shadow fell over her – a very large shadow.

"Mikaela?" Ratchet's voice sounded then, oddly gentle, and she heard the soft hum of gears and servos as the medic crouched down on hands and knees beside her. And, oh God, just how much had he heard if he was here and using that tone of voice? Some of it? All of it? Mikaela squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, struggling for control of herself. She didn't do this – she wasn't one of _those_ girls, no matter what her grandmother might wish. She might not steal cars, but she was Jackson Banes's daughter, and she did _not _do this! _Get a hold of yourself!_

"Just gimme a minute. Please," she added as an afterthought. Fortunately, as yesterday had amply shown, Ratchet was not the sort to be easily put off by abrasiveness – he'd enough of that himself to respect it in others, however much bickering went on about it. Or at least, that was what she had gotten out of the hours in the garage with him and Bumblebee.

But if he were not offended by her sharpness, he was still concerned – she could feel it leaching off him. He didn't say anything, though, and perhaps it was precisely because he was an alien, and he knew it, and was wary, still, of pressing his concerns upon her when he was so new to human beings. _Or maybe he just thinks you're fragile and weak and can't handle it_, the scornful voice within said, as she forced hysteria aside. She wiped irritably at the tears with her sleeve, and shoved herself to her feet, not quite meeting his eyes.

"All right," she said, breathing deeply and exhaling with determination. She lifted her chin and straightened her still sore back. "So what's the deal today?" she asked.

Ratchet unfolded from his crouch and stood staring down at her a moment, before he replied, "I still need to do quite a few repairs and testing of molecular circuitry I doubt you would be equipped to handle. But as I said, if you're willing to do some cleaning, that would help. And there are a few servos I think you could repair – that would hurry things along. Up for it?"

"Definitely," she replied, and led the way back in. Once there, she wasted no time setting purse and jacket aside, rolling up her sleeves, and getting straight to work. From the sound of things, he did the same, and for awhile at least, they were content to work without speaking. And as she scrubbed, using a can of compressed air to get the dirt out of areas that looked like imprinted circuitry, and a rag and the mechanic's commercial off the shelf favorite cleaner (a toothbrush) on gears, the silence slowly wore her down. It took maybe half an hour, but finally she sat back and glanced over at Ratchet who was busy with a rather delicate looking probe.

"Hey, Ratchet?" she said, a little hesitantly.

"Mm?" he grunted, gaze fixed on the part being probed and on the projected glyphs hovering eerily in space before him, shifting rapidly as the probe sent back its findings.

"I'm sorry. For snapping at you back there," she apologized. Ratchet did not answer immediately. He finished his investigation, then gave a disgusted shake of his head and set the piece carefully aside before he reached for the next one. But he didn't take it up, and the 'screen' froze as he lowered his left arm.

"Were you able to convince your grandmother the transgression was accidental?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Then there will be no lasting trouble over your absence?"

"She'll get over it," Mikaela confirmed, though she added, "It might take until I get my own place, though."

"Good. I imagine it would be difficult to find parts to repair you with should she kill you."

Mikaela gave him a somewhat weak smile at the thought, as a flash of yesterday's carnage popped into her head. "Probably," she managed.

"She will inform your parents, then, and your family of your status?"

Mikaela shook her head, and bent her head to flash her light about and check to see if she'd missed anything clinging to Bumblebee's insides. "I don't have any other family, other than my dad. And he's not home." There was a silence behind her, but she did not choose to fill it. She'd already let it slip yesterday that her dad was in jail, and she didn't feel up to explaining things at the moment. So instead, she asked: "What about your families? Do they know anything about where you are?"

"Cohort," came the slightly absent-minded response.

"Sorry?"

"Cohort, not family," Ratchet said, and then cursed softly as more sparks went up. He shook his hand, and for a moment, Mikaela wondered if he'd burned himself (and what it took to burn an Autobot if getting hit in the chest by somebody's plasma discharge didn't qualify as a burn). But then she heard the tell-tale hum and metallic _click_ of parts shifting, as he came up with what looked like some sort of volt and amp meter, which he applied to whatever he was working on – some kind of sensor, she gathered from the hovering blue schematic that had reappeared. "And no, I very much doubt our original cohorts know where we are. Nor can any of us be certain that all or any of them are alive still."

"I'm sorry," she said, feeling a welling up of guilty sympathy in light of her phone call home.

"You have done nothing to warrant apologizing," Ratchet answered, displaying that talent for literalism once more. Or perhaps it wasn't misunderstanding, per se. Mikaela got the distinct impression that this 'lapse' was less one of understanding than of a deliberate sidelining of the topic.

So Mikaela quietly returned her attention to her efforts to get the oil-encrusted dirt and other bits of foreign debris out of Bumblebee's exposed parts. There was an amazing amount of glass still stuck up there in odd places, and little bits of gravel, it looked like, that had been pounded in by their slaloming entry into battle. No wonder Ratchet wanted this taken care of – it was tedious, but she was undoubtedly better able to get at the stuff than Ratchet would be. At least until he brought a surgical laser-cutter to bear, but she supposed he probably didn't want to have to do any more patching up than he had to, either.

She was pursuing a particularly elusive bit of debris when Bumblebee twitched slightly. Mikaela jumped, and glanced up the length of his frame to see that him watching her, eyes at, it seemed, half-power. She opened her mouth to protest that he was supposed to be asleep, but a brief, sharp flick of a finger – _Don't!_ – stopped her. She bit her tongue lightly as his eyes cut towards Ratchet, who was absorbed in his own work and had not yet noticed that his fellow Autobot was awake yet. Clearly, Bumblebee wasn't eager to attract the medic's attention to himself.

Mikaela gave a slight nod of understanding, but then raised her brows and shrugged minutely – _It's your funeral when he finds out._ Bumblebee's eyes glowed a little more brightly, apparently amused, but he made no further move, just watched as she went back to her task. Knowing he was awake now, and still unsure just how much – and what sort of – sensation he might feel, she was careful, especially when it came to soldering wires back into place. Not to mention, of course, that she didn't want to have her own fingers caught in any gears or electrocuted by a sudden flinch she might've prevented.

As she worked, she could hear Ratchet muttering to himself in Cybertronian – probably swearing, given the tone of it. She felt her brow furrow, worried despite the medic's reassurance earlier that he could repair Bumblebee. What if that had been just a dodge – just empty words? Or maybe he had been wrong, and things were looking worse now? Bumblebee wasn't moving, and she couldn't tell by his expression whether he was concerned or not. Then again, Ratchet wasn't exactly one to keep his displeasure to himself. _Maybe he's just used to this,_ she thought, and hoped that were so, and even more, that there really was no reason for concern.

At length, the muttering hit a high point, as Ratchet spat something decidedly cross, motor churning in unhappy counterpoint, and then there came the sound of footsteps as the medic approached. "Mikaela, why don't you let me take a lo – " he began, and then stopped. As soon as he did, Bumblebee's vents flared slightly, and he pushed himself up on an elbow. Game over, apparently.

"Got some news for me, Ratch?" he asked, just as if nothing were amiss in the slightest.

"You!" Ratchet snarled, sounding more than half thunderstruck. "How are you even conscious yet?"

Bumblebee gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Little trick I picked up from Jazz awhile back to get around remote timers – it's saved me a few times, I can tell you."

"Why does this not surprise me?" The exasperated medic clapped a hand to his face. "Get it through your head: you're not slagging in hostile territory, so it's not gonna save you from _me_!" But almost as quickly as it arose, wrath ceded place to a far less reassuring sobriety, though not without a disgusted glare for the smaller 'bot. "We'll have words later on why you will _not_ pull that trick _ever_ again when I'm the one holding the timer. For the moment, there are some other things to discuss."

"What's the problem?" Bumblebee asked immediately, all trace of good humor gone in an instant. "Give it to me straight up, doc, no paint jobs."

"You've lost about forty percent of the central transformation node cluster in your legs," Ratchet replied flatly. And Mikaela, who was even less familiar with Cybertronian physiology than Ratchet was with human physiology, no doubt, didn't need an expert's judgment to recognize that as bad news. Even if it hadn't sounded pretty serious, the atmosphere would've given it away, for all that expressions were less than revealing – and so weirdly, all too revealing. Bumblebee wasn't devastated, but she could almost see his spirits sink.

"All right," he said at length. "What else?"

"The breaks weren't clean in the first place – part of the damage came from shrapnel, part of it from angle of impact, but the final factor was the collapse of that wall and support structure after you collided with it. You took a hit from Starscream's plasma missiles – you would've had a lot of brittle plating and fused wiring to deal with in any case from the heat. Add the blunt force trauma of a crush wound like that, and unless I have access to a decent smelting pit, forge and chemical treatment unit, we have a problem. I can repair your basic support structure, but that's about all I can salvage from your parts with what I've got."

Ratchet paused a moment to let this sink in, before he continued, on a slightly less morbid note: "However, you're not quite out of luck yet, though it'll mean stretching things a bit where the others are concerned until we can get at least a field repair bay operational. You're the only mech among us whose neural network is directly interchangeable with Jazz's – you're small enough, light enough, and your kinesthetic imprinting is similar enough to be compatible. I doubt you'll have to do much in the way of overwriting, even. I won't even have to help you with it to get you moving again. And I can scavenge enough of his plating, cabling, and the rest to modify it to fit you.

"So," Ratchet concluded, and smiled suddenly – a surprisingly sincere smile, without the trappings of irony or cynicism, "it looks as though we can find a use for Jazz after all."

Which pronouncement didn't garner the response Mikaela would've expected: Bumblebee's door-wings drooped, and he smiled at Ratchet in evident relief. Which, granted, she could understand on one level – Ratchet's recitation had been grim listening, and must've been especially so to the one it concerned, but _still_...

She thought again of the dead lying in the rubble of Mission City, and of frantic family desperate for news of them, if only to bury them or cremate them and know they were taken care of. Her grandma had been crying over her, thinking she wouldn't have a body to bury, even...

Abruptly Mikaela stood. Both Autobots looked at her, puzzled. She licked her lips and swallowed. "I need some air – I think I need to go out for just a little while," she said lamely, and then before any awkward questions could arise, she turned and made her way out, quickly.

"All right," she heard Ratchet say, and knew he didn't believe that, but also that he didn't understand what was troubling her, either. Bumblebee's silence suggested likewise.

Once outside, she made straight for the curb and stood there, leaning against a tree in a sidewalk planter. _This is stupid!_ she told herself, scowling._ Nothing happened to you, after all. And it's not like it isn't necessary, doing that to Jazz. It's like... like organ donation._ But somehow, it still bothered her – maybe not the idea of using someone's organs – or parts – for others, but there was something in the way those two had acted that sat wrong with her. After all, Jazz was their friend, wasn't he? Surely, they shouldn't be this happy he was... 'available'.

An engine started in the lot behind her, and then someone – it could only be Ironhide – transformed. Sure enough, a few moments later, the weapons specialist was at her side, squatting on his haunches to draw level with someone twice her height. "Hey," she offered, not wanting to be rude, though she didn't bother to hide the fact that she was subdued.

"Mikaela," he greeted her. "Didn't expect to see you out here. Ratchet kick you out?"

"No," she replied. "Just the – atmosphere was getting to me," she replied, striving for diplomacy. And then, as her stomach growled suddenly, "I think I'm hungry, too." Very hungry, as she realized suddenly just how long it had been since she'd had anything substantial. _Maybe that's part of what's wrong with me today,_ she thought.

"There's nothing here you can ingest?"

"Not unless it's coffee," she replied, then glanced up at him. "What about you? Are you done recharging?"

"That'll take awhile longer unless Ratchet's in the mood to hand out energon shots," Ironhide answered. "But I'll do well enough so long as we don't find any firefights today. Mainly I wanted to stretch out a bit. How's Bumblebee?"

"Ratchet's got an idea for how to fix him – he'll be fine," Mikaela answered, a little shortly. If Ironhide noticed her tone, he didn't show it, just nodded and said:

"Good to hear. Ratchet's probably the best we've got, but even he can't fix some things." Then: "So, what were you going to do about getting your energy level up?"

"I dunno, actually," Mikaela replied, frowning as she looked up and down the street at tightly shut up shops. "Nothing's open."

"There's gotta be something. Don't humans have some stockpiles in case of emergency?"

"Maybe in earthquake country," she muttered. "Everything's just shut down."

"What about Lennox's people? Must be eating something."

Lennox. There was an idea. "Where are they?"

"Back toward the battlefield – they've set up a base of operations there, though I'd not recommend going in alone. Don't know if they know you."

Back toward the battlefield meant back in the middle of the damage... "No, I don't think that would be a good idea," she said, feeling her stomach churn a bit. "Thanks, though, Ironhide."

"Well, then you'll have to find someplace else, open or not."

"And what? Steal?" Mikaela sighed, rubbing at her brow. Why did that always, always have to come up? With her grandma, it was the constant fear that she would go nab a car, like her dad. Now she had alien robots suggesting she go rob a store! And the less said about that Simmons creep, with his stupid "Criminals are hot!", the better...

"Girl, I hope you'll not take it wrong, but even I can see you're not right. You can't beat entropy – gotta get something in you to burn at some point, and the sooner the better."

"Yeah, but I'm not going to go around stealing stuff, Ironhide!"

"Then I'll take you over to see Lennox's crew."

"I – don't think I can. Just – I don't want to head downtown when they're still... cleaning. I'll just wait."

"Wait, and you'll have Ratchet trying to figure out where to plug you into a power socket," the Autobot declared with a snort and a cycle of vents. "Look here, girl: you're planning to pay for what you take, right?"

"Yeah."

"So how's it stealing? Leave 'em a note or a few credits or a labor contract – something."

"And how am I going to get in, anyway?" she demanded. At that, Ironhide just chuckled, and she heard his engine churn in a rather eager manner.

"Just leave that to me – locks around here aren't all that complicated," he said.

She gave him a look. "You're a lock-smith and a weapons specialist?"

"Mech of many talents, that's me," Ironhide replied, without a shred of modesty, then straightened up. "So – you want a lift, or not?"

Mikaela hesitated for just a moment before she nodded. "Guess I do. Thanks, Ironhide!"

"Eh." Having shrugged thanks aside, Ironhide stepped onto the street and transformed once more into Topkick mode, opening the driver side door for her. "Don't know as anyone's looking, but you'll save me the power needed to run the holoprojector. Just don't step on the gas," he warned.

"You got it," she replied, as she settled behind the wheel. The door closed behind her, and as she buckled in, she noted Ratchet at least look over his shoulder at the sound. But he didn't look long – he had other things to do, clearly, and was back to doing them the moment he assured himself it was only Ironhide. Mikaela sighed as the Autobot pulled up away from the curb and up to an intersection.

"So," he said, "where to?"

* * *

They ended up at a small family grocer's about five miles out from the city center, the city center and its surroundings being devoted mostly to shops and restaurants. Mikaela had decided that if she was going to be stuck here for a time, she might as well pick up "stockpiles" as Ironhide had put it, which ruled out breaking into any of the restaurants. 

Even better, she didn't even need Ironhide's particular talents. It was actually open, though no one but the owner was about. Apparently, they were far enough from the damaged zones that a few people were willing to risk war or other disaster rolling through. Mikaela lingered over the chore – somehow, the sheer ordinariness of filling a shopping basket was soothing, and she felt a need of something... well, boring, actually.

"Twenty-five sixty," the store's owner pronounced, when she had hauled her findings up to the counter. He watched her with some curiosity as she rooted around in her wallet for a five and change she was sure she possessed to add to the twenty. "Were you up near the city center?" he asked after a moment, eying her rather dirty and torn clothing.

"Yeah," she said, without looking up.

"See anything?"

Mikaela sighed. "Yeah," she replied, more softly. The owner, sensing this was a line of questioning best discontinued, took the five, slid the twenty back to her, rang up the till, and shook his head in refusal of her attempt to pay in full.

"Sounds bad, from the little we heard out here. If you're looking for supplies – maybe first aid or a change of clothes," he suggested, "you might try a little further down San Juan Street. I know the woman who owns the secondhand store – she was there when I drove past, earlier."

"Thanks," Mikaela said, gratefully.

Perhaps an hour later, having successfully acquired a set of sweats and a t-shirt, and a few other necessary items from Tella's Thrift Store, Mikaela and Ironhide departed back for the garage. "Maybe you should eat some of whatever you bought," the Autobot suggested after a silent five minutes of driving.

"Mm," Mikaela grunted. But she did pull a granola bar out of one of the bags. She tore the top of the wrapper off and, despite being ravenous, took a bite and chewed slowly, thinking. Finally: "Ironhide?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have a cohort?"

"Everybody does," came the reply.

"And it's like a family, but different?"

"I suppose," the weapons specialist replied, after a moment's thought. Then: "You know, you probably want to ask Bumblebee, or Prime, if he ever comes in from the field to face Ratchet. They're the two whose business it is to know that sort of thing."

"Yeah, but if you've got a cohort, you must know something about it," Mikaela deflected the suggestion.

"Well, yeah, but – "

"That is, if you don't mind," she added quickly.

"No," Ironhide hastened to reassure her, "it's just I might not be the best choice for this sort of talk." She shrugged, and then wondered whether he could detect that in this mode. But whether or not he did, he continued nevertheless. "You looking to hear something about cohorts generally, or mine in particular?"

"Either. Both," she replied.

"Well, a cohort is a group of us that belong together thanks to a common social purpose," he explained.

"Social purpose? Like what?" she asked, trying to envision Grandma Lori and herself hanging out at... what? A knitter's convention? Sister Rita's Saturday Night Bingo? A concert?

"Like keeping everyone in good repair, like Ratchet. Or working the subterranean powerlines, like 'Bee."

"Oh. You mean like work."

"Yeah. Work – 'common social purpose,'" Ironhide replied blithely, as if that were evident. "So anyway, it's a group that works together for some reason. They're different sizes, depending on where you live, how the city's set up, what's needed – that sort of thing."

"And you just join one?"

"Sometimes, if you move to a different city. Most of us stick around, unless there's some real need for one of us somewhere else. Or if you find you're better suited to something else by some mystery of the spark. But mostly," Ironhide said, as he slowed to make a left turn, "no, cohorts look after themselves. If they need somebody to do something particular, they build who they need, interface with the Allspark, then train up the newly sparked, introduce him about."

"They make you just because they need help?"

"Sure." A beat. "That's not how human beings do it?"

"Some places, maybe. Not so much here."

"Huh. Sounds inefficient."

"I... guess so. That's not really something we think about, when it comes to family." Then: "So your cohort made you to be a weapons specialist?"

"Not exactly. That came later, though I was built dual purpose, it's true," Ironhide explained. "Got brought online by Iacon's Second Heavy Architectural Cohort – mostly doing the heavy lifting and welding for infrastructure on buildings, mostly in the outlying city nodes. The Decepticons were getting to be a problem – they'd come in and strafe the cohort crews, take them out, and destroy what they'd built. There weren't so many Autobots then, and I have to say, being as how most everyone wasn't built to fight, we weren't too good at it in those days. Mostly you'd get 'bots still getting used to their reconned alt-modes and programming that tended to interfere more than help with the processing.

"So anyhow, my cohort got tired of that and started looking into building some protection into their numbers, while also pulling their numbers up. Got some of the 'bots from the Fifth Defensive Artillery Cohort, which had stepped up for the Autobot cause, to help them out. The Fifth D-A-C figured it'd be easy enough, given as how we're on the bulky side to handle the loads we bear, to fit in some decent plate armor and defensive-ware, and a get a good bit of anti-air-craft artillery in there, too. So that's why I'm here, and my brothers, too."

"You've got brothers?" Mikaela asked, surprised.

"Well yeah. Just one of me's not likely to even the odds much!"

"So your cohort's like your parents... and your siblings?"

"Guess so."

Mikaela thought about this a moment, frowning as memory dredged up a puzzling moment of that final struggle in Mission City which, in light of this, was moving from 'puzzling' to 'disturbing.' "But didn't Optimus Prime call Megatron his 'brother'...?"

"Yeah, well, there're glitches and mis-makes in every cohort, I guess." Mikaela got the distinct impression that the Autobot shrugged as he said it. "Some work out well going somewhere else, doing something else. Some are just glitched all the way through and fraggin' downgrades on everyone."

"But if he's his _brother_ – "

"They were built for the same reason, though it's... different for them. Not every sibling comes from the same cohort, you see, 'cause not every task that has the same function works the same." Ironhide paused. "I'm not saying this right," the Autobot said at length, sounding a little frustrated with himself. "Don't you have any other word for 'brother' than the one?"

"Step-brother?"

"No, don't think so."

"Half-brother?"

"Definitely not." Ironhide paused, then said seriously, "But words aside, look, Mikaela, don't worry about it. Prime's not gonna be turning his guns on us or anything. He and Megatron are brothers, but they're different. Megatron was a weapon – I mean, seriously a weapon, not some split-purpose like me, even. That's what he was made for – that, and interfacing with the others – combat control, you see. Prime's not like that."

"I... see." Though in fact, she didn't quite. But probably Ironhide was right, and she should ask Bumblebee later, when she could face him without feeling a certain uncomfortable indignancy. Because there was, she thought, no way she was going to ask Prime that question, no matter how nice he seemed to be. And anyway, she had other questions. "What about Jazz?" she asked, a little hesitantly.

Ironhide was silent momentarily, but then: "What about Jazz?"

"What cohort did he come from?"

"There's a question – gotta admit, he's a bit of a mystery," Ironhide answered. "I can figure some of him out, but not the rest. Not necessarily. He was always on the close side, 'cept with Prime and maybe with 'Bee, and you can't really fool Ratchet when he's constantly poking around your insides.

"Jazz is sort of... general purpose, you might say. Versatile. He could do a good bit of a lot of things, though he'd never stand up to someone built for any particular thing. But if you needed somebody you could count on to get a thing done that had a lot of sides to it, and quickly, he was the first one you'd ask. He's done a couple of different things, and although I'd think his name meant something, there's just a lot about him he kept to himself. Good mech, easy-going, but not too open for all that. Guess that's the way it had to be, given what he did for us."

"You mean being a first lieutenant?"

"Nah. I mean being Optimus's Special Ops mech. He and 'Bee are both more or less in that same line of work – brothers since they joined the Autobots. 'Bee's just not been around as long as Jazz – and we know what 'Bee was built for, originally. Jazz, though..." Ironhide gave a grunt that sounded like baffled ignorance. "Jazz always claimed he was last with the First Geosurvey and Development Cohort back in Polyhex province, before the Decepticons took it – and that makes sense of some of what he was packing. But he definitely didn't start there. Not even sure if that was really his chosen cohort the way most changers mean it – could've been he saw a need and got himself partly outfitted and trained by a cohort that could teach him to fill it."

"So... nobody knows who his cohort is, back on Cybertron?"

"If anyone does, it's Optimus. Why?"

"I was thinking," Mikaela sighed, "if something had happened to me, someone would've called my grandmother, and then my dad. They'd want to know. Doesn't Jazz have _anyone_ like that, who'd want to know what happened to him in the end, no matter what?"

"He's got us," came the immediate, staunch reply, with a bit of offended growl thrown in.

"I didn't mean he didn't," Mikaela quickly backtracked in response to that tone. "Just that, I dunno, it's – " _It's what?_ she wondered suddenly. What _was_ 'it'? Maybe she should've eaten more before having this conversation, because of a sudden, everything seemed less clear, or the muddledness of her thoughts and feelings had just been made clear. Between family and organ donors and smelting Jazz down to 'reuse' him, something was nagging, and quite a lot, but though she felt it still, she realized she had no idea how to say what it was, let alone ask a question about it. _And now I've gone and got an Autobot the size of a truck pissed at me._ Terrific. She sighed, and finished, rather lamely, "It's just different for you guys, I guess. I don't know. I'm sorry. I just… I don't know."

"Clearly not," Ironhide grumbled, and fell silent. For a time, neither of them spoke, and Mikaela quietly devoured a few more granola bars in the hopes that might help wake her up, or stop her head from spinning. Ironhide reached San Rio Drive, turned onto it, and pulled smartly into the lot, rolling to a halt by the back door, which stood closer to the break room. Mikaela climbed out and gathered up her newly acquired things.

"Thanks for the ride," she told him, and turned to go.

But before she could, Ironhide spoke. "Mikaela." She stopped, looked back over her shoulder at him. "I told you I wasn't the one to ask about these sorts of things, but there's one thing you need to know, and that's this: when we became Autobots, we joined a cohort. We all became changers. And this squad's a cohort, too, for all we do different things. If there's anyone who'll care about what happens to any one of us in the end, you're looking at 'em right here. And we don't forget that."

Mikaela stared at him a moment, then cocked her head at him. For she got the feeling that despite his tone, which was taut still with what one might suppose had to be anger, he was anxiously awaiting her reply: as if he were worried that she wouldn't understand, that he had, as he had said earlier, 'not said it right.'

But however lacking English might be in the terms a Cybertronian required, she thought she understood better now, the feeling that belonged to all the strangely flat terms like 'cohort' and the rest. And so she replied, quietly: "Thanks, Ironhide."

Ironhide's engine gave a bit of a cough. "Don't mention it," he said, and then backed up, made a quick three point turn, and moved off to go take up his spot in the lot once more. Mikaela, for her part, let herself in the back door of the garage and made for the break room, where she set about settling her things. She stuck a plastic container of ramen noodles in the microwave and got herself another glass of water, and when the timer beeped, she sat down at the beaten old table and dug in with a gusto that ramen noodles ordinarily would not have deserved. But hey, it'd been since lunch and Sam's handle-bar pirouette since she'd really eaten anything, as even the 'bots were keen to point out to her.

Once she'd finished, she cleaned up after herself, washed her borrowed dishes, and then stood there at the little sink in the bathroom, leaning against the basin. Ok. Time to start this day for good. No more of this weird moodiness or weepiness or anything. _Done with that. S_o, she told herself, _get yourself together, girl. There's got to be something you can do_.

With that firmly in mind, she nerved herself, and headed out into the garage proper to see whether she could be of any help in disassembling Jazz…

* * *

**Author's Notes** : 

The radio station Mikaela wakes up to is a real station, based out of Flagstaff, Arizona, which I'm guessing is the closest major broadcast city to the fictional Mission City. See here for details:

www dot usnpl dot com backslash radio backslash azradio dot php

Camaros shattering windshields the way Bumblebee did in the film – given that windshield glass is designed specifically to avoid shattering, I'm not sure whether the film didn't violate the laws of physics in order to have a pretty spray of glass. In any case, it at least is true that you really wouldn't think a Camaro could use its sound system to break glass on that scale.

Maybe ambulances do carry tetanus shots for emergencies, I don't know. I couldn't find that information in a quick look, but I'm guessing it'd make more sense to send the victim to a hospital or doctor's office since it's a fairly common vaccination.

I don't know that there's much background on Mikaela, but I get the impression she's either estranged from her mother or else that her mother is dead from her one wistful comment about Judy Witwicky in the movie. And the background for Transformer 'families' and the like is obviously an invention, rather than based on anything said in either the movie or the cartoons.

Last chapter still to write, and I don't know how long it'll take to get it into postable form.


	3. Common Ground

**Common Ground**

In her absence, Ratchet had been busy. Which was hardly a surprise – Mikaela was beginning to think he probably wouldn't take a break until he'd gotten Bumblebee repaired, and maybe not even then. Ironhide still had to be fixed, and the weapons specialist _had_ made that comment about Prime needing to come in, still, to "face" Ratchet, all of which suggested it might be awhile before the medical officer did any 'recharging.' At the moment, Ratchet was bending over Jazz's poor remains; he had a number of long, clear tubes laid out at his side capped by some sort of nozzle-like top that he'd retrieved from who knew where, and a few of them were filled with some strange, glowing fluid.

"Mikaela." Bumblebee had noticed her arrival, and beckoned to her now. He, too, was busy, it seemed – he had a number of servos stacked at his side and blue eyes narrowed as he peered at the one he was currently using some sort of laser-like tool on.

"What's going on?" she asked, gesturing to Ratchet as she joined him.

"Energon extraction. Best to stay away."

Mikaela nodded. Given Ratchet's paranoid concern to keep her away from it yesterday, Bumblebee was no doubt right.

"So what _is_ this energon anyway?" she had asked, when he'd warned her way from a certain module or set of lines for perhaps the tenth time. "What's in it that it's so dangerous?"

"Compounds that are highly reactive until processed in a Cybertronian's central converter," had been the terse reply. And when Mikaela had just looked expectantly at him, his vents had cycled, but he had submitted to the unspoken demand. "It's fuel. It can bind with any number of molecules to take different forms that have a greater or lesser amount of energy stored in the chemical bonds. You'll remember how Sector Seven determined you'd been in contact with us?"

It had taken a moment's thought, but then she had recalled that Simmons had had that counter on him, and all the talk of the weird radiation the Allspark had given off, and had sucked in an alarmed breath. "You guys are radioactive?" she had said.

"No. Well, yes," Ratchet had said, and scowled, and waved a hand. "But that's not the point. Simmons wasn't scanning for radiation – the shielding we have built into our systems means we don't stand out against the background radiation in any industrial sector of this planet. He was scanning for compounds that had traces of bound energon – I suppose they found it simplest to modify a radiation detector.

"In any case, energon has a high reactivity index – it will bind with just about anything, including your skin. We find this both painful and potentially dangerous when it happens to us; in a human, it might be crippling or fatal. So," he had concluded oppressively, "don't touch it. Don't go putting your hands near injectors. And don't play with the energon lines. I don't care how redundant their breach containment system is. There's a reason they _have_ a metal-mesh sheath and two layers of inert insulation! So just keep anything sharp away from them and don't go near the attachment points."

Both of which rules Ratchet appeared to be violating at the moment, between the containers and the power saw he was using. Yup, definitely not the time to wander over. Besides, she wasn't really that eager to watch him cut into Jazz, and it wasn't as if he hadn't already left her something to do earlier. "Were these in my pile?" she asked, gesturing to the servos.

"Thought I'd get a head start," Bumblebee replied, even as he reached and plucked a toolkit off the nearby bench. His vents flared as he said, "It it's not as if I haven't had plenty of practice!"

"These yours?" Mikaela asked, as she accepted the kit and settled tailor style on the floor across from him.

"Some of them. Doesn't matter, though," Bumblebee replied, as he aimed a forefinger at a recalcitrant part and a laser beam appeared suddenly. "Jazz and I patched each other up plenty of times in the field – Ratchet's not the only one who's seen our parts too often." So he said, and seemed to sigh softly.

"Mm." Mikaela chose not to reply in any more detail, but simply bent over the broken part with a screwdriver.

They were silent after that, and as first one hour and then another passed, a steadily increasing number of mended parts made their way from one pile to another, while from the other side of the room, a more punctuated stream of growls and mutterings gave evidence of Ratchet's progress, or lack thereof.

It was all the more startling, therefore, when both Ratchet and Bumblebee froze of a sudden, the two Autobots stiffening with what seemed to be alarm. Mikaela, confused, glanced back and forth between them, as Ironhide's engine roared loudly to life outside the shop. In the distance came the sudden sound of machine gunfire.

That seemed to break the spell, as Ratchet swore – or at least, that's what it sounded like – and faster than she would've thought possible for a being of his size, he was out the front, having dropped what he was doing in an instant. He hollered something short and sharp at Ironhide, transformed, and, to the accompaniment of sirens, squealing tires and the scent of burned rubber, peeled out of the lot and down the street, heading back towards the city center.

"Whoa," Mikaela managed. "What the – ?"

"Prime," Bumblebee said, voice suddenly and utterly cool – soldierly, she supposed. "Combat warning just flashed over the HUD."

"Is it that cop car again?" Mikaela asked, dreading the answer.

"Could be," Bumblebee replied, though a skeptical undercurrent told against that possibility. "I doubt it, though. Prime flagged it an unknown sniper. We know Barricade's somewhere on Earth, but that's just not his style."

"Not unless Barricade's got a death wish," a rumbling voice said, and then Ironhide appeared suddenly in robot form by the entry way. "Even so, he'd need a good long range between himself and Prime to pull off a hit."

"How long a range?" Mikaela asked worriedly, thinking of long, straight city streets.

"Too long for Barricade to succeed," Bumblebee replied, and explained: "At the distance he'd need, he'd come up against the same problem I have. He just doesn't have the firepower to pierce Prime's armor, unless maybe Prime decided to stand stock still and face into a full clip for some reason."

Ironhide shook his head. "Prime could do that and Barricade still wouldn't walk away from it," he said, with a derisory cycling of vents. "Time it'd take him to empty his clip and for the whole payload to hit home, Prime could still get a shot of his own off, and once _that_ happened – " The weapons specialist mimed shooting himself in the head. "Game over. Like I said: for this to be Barricade, he'd need a death wish."

Bumblebee grunted, engine whirring in an agitated fashion, as the sounds of sporadic combat continued, though a little more distantly, as if the shooters were moving away from them. "Be nice if he had one," the smaller 'bot said, hard tone and harsh sentence at odds with his cheerful color scheme.

"Ain't likely, though," Ironhide replied, even as he transformed one arm into a cannon and ran a quick check on its settings. "'F it were Barricade, Prime would've called me in. Slagger might not have the range, but if he wants to get into it, he's likely to mess you up pretty good for all that." The cannon gave an electronic whine, rising in pitch as it charged. "Occurs to me, though, that we might not have seen everyone yet. Could be some kinda decoy."

"Which is why I'm worried about Ratchet being out there," Bumblebee said unhappily.

"Yeah, well, that's where you come in," a preoccupied Ironhide tersely replied, at which pronouncement, Bumblebee darted a concerned look at Mikaela, then glanced back at his taller comrade.

"Um, Ironhide, Prime was pretty clear. I don't think you should go – "

"Oh I'm not going anywhere," the other 'bot interrupted him, and gave a snort of amused laughter, vents flaring, as he eyed Bumblebee. "Like you're in any state to hold a parking place! But you know what I meant: this is Doc Ratchet we're talking about – he doesn't leave a job half-done."

Bumblebee didn't respond to that, just sat staring intently out at the empty street, listening to the firefight. After a few moments, Ironhide shook himself, transformed his other arm into a matching cannon, then said, casually, "Think I'll go take a walk around the block, see what's to be seen. Shoot if you need me."

"Will do. And 'Hide," Bumblebee called after his departing comrade.

"Yeah?"

"Patch your sensors into mine – you know I've got the better suite, and it's not like I've got a lot to do here."

"You got it. And you, girl," the weapons specialist added, as he took a last look about from the lot, "anything goes down, get yourself under cover and stay out of the way."

"Right," Mikaela said, drawing a deep breath, even as Bumblebee brought his guns up – rocket launchers and energy canon, both. "You really think there might be more than one Decepticon out there?" she asked nervously.

"Anything's possible," Bumblebee replied, but then said, in a reassuring tone: "Most likely, Prime's just playing it safe. Ironhide's right: if he were truly concerned about his ability to handle this, he'd call in the heavy weaponry, not Ratchet."

"Why does he want Ratchet, then? If he doesn't really _need_ him..."

"My guess? Field repair – probably for the other guy. Or else autopsy. But it's possible Prime might take some damage, too, that it'd be better to handle on the spot. And of course," and here Bumblebee's tone grew a little wry, "there's always damage control. He's already gonna be facing one short-fused medic for staying out like he has been, and not coming in to recharge or anything after that face-off with Megatron. If he just showed up here after a fight, Ratchet would take him apart – literally."

With that, Bumblebee lapsed into watchful silence, while Mikaela stood there, feeling tense and a little queasy as she looked about, wondering what would count as cover. When your enemy could flip cars at you as easily as kids threw rocks, that made it rather difficult to come up with anything.

Which was why, in the end, she stalked over to the wall and took down a crowbar, hefting it once just to make sure she could swing it. It probably wouldn't do her much good, but the mace in her purse would be even more useless. At least she could maybe crack a windshield if anything got close. _Maybe_.

Thus armed against lurking Decepticons, she went and settled herself _behind _Bumblebee's bulk instead of across from him, laid the crowbar across her lap, hauled a servo over, and kept on with her repair job. _It's not like standing around's going to help anything, or anyone_, she thought determinedly, though she decided that she wouldn't be telling her grandmother about this when she called home later tonight. In the distance, an explosion rumbled. Nope, definitely not something to mention to Grandma Lori...

Time passed slowly, and other than the occasional click and whir of Bumblebee's servos as he shifted position ever so slightly, and the irregular report of machine guns somewhere in amid the skyscrapers, it was utterly quiet. Wherever Ironhide was, he was certainly lying low and running silent. Mikaela placed her servo in the finished pile and took up another, forcing herself to ignore the sounds of battle entirely too close for comfort, even if it _was_ a mile away.

After a small eternity, however, Bumblebee let out a synthesized trill, and his launchers retracted. "Is it over?" Mikaela demanded hopefully. "Are they all right?"

"Yes, and yes," Bumblebee replied, though he didn't shift his right arm out of cannon mode just yet. "They're coming in. Ironhide – go!"

Apparently, that last had gone into some sort of radio transmitter, for Bumblebee's voice suddenly dropped eerily to Ironhide's lower register. "Rolling," he said tersely. "ETA two minutes to take position."

"Copy that, ETA two minutes," Bumblebee replied, shifting back to his regular voice, then looked over at Mikaela. "You all right?"

"We didn't get shot at," she said and shrugged. Bumblebee's eyes brightened noticeably.

"Which makes it a good day," he agreed, wry amusement evident in his tone, though he glanced once more out at the street. "My sensors aren't picking anything up – we're probably in the clear. But why don't you stay where you are until Prime and Ratchet get here?"

As it happened, that didn't take very long. She heard Ratchet before she saw him – he had his sirens on again, and a minute or two later, a Hummer and a rather battered semi pulled into the lot. Prime transformed first, somewhat more slowly than was usual even for him, while Ratchet sat idling. Mikaela didn't understand that until Prime rapped once on Ratchet's roof, and the back doors of the search and rescue vehicle popped open. Prime reached in and withdrew something smallish and green that looked like it had seen better days.

"What is that?" she asked. Bumblebee spread his hands, as mystified as she.

"Don't know. What happened out there?" he called to his commander and CMO.

"Would you fragging believe a _vending machine_?" Ratchet's querulous voice floated back, slamming his doors before transforming. He proceeded then to limp back to the garage, clearly favoring his left leg, which sparked at the knee joint and whose plate armor had clearly been breached by a round of bullets.

Bumblebee's door-wings flexed rather noticeably, and his eyes shuttered once, twice, even as their glow increased. "So Ratch," he said, carefully, "are you saying you got popped by a pop machine?"

"It isn't funny," the medic growled, which only inspired the smaller Autobot to put his head in his hands and howl, motor churning and choking with hysterical amusement. Tossing Bumblebee a disdainful glare, Ratchet turned then to Prime and pointed to a spot in the front corner of the garage. "Put him there. I'll take a look later, not that there's much to look at after Des Moines Street!"

"Is it... dead?" Mikaela asked, hesitantly.

"Unfortunately," Prime said heavily, as he followed Ratchet's instructions, then knelt down examine the smaller green robot, whose paint did still bear a recognizable cola label that Mikaela could just make out despite the burn marks and shattered plating. After a moment, the commander of the Autobots shook his head, his tone puzzled and regretful as he said, "I did not recognize his energy signature – no decal, no indication that he understood us, either. Not even when we spoke Cybertronian."

"It's likely he was using a flux inducer to alter his signature. If I can find one, there may be enough left to extract the algorithm he was using to distort it. But you know how they work – once his spark chamber was compromised, it should've triggered an overload in the inducer that would take his transponder with it," Ratchet said, rather more somber than surly now. "Even if I find one, it's likely I won't be able to get enough from it to reconstruct his original signature. We may never know who this was."

"I know. Do your best."

"Once I finish with the living. Which I'll do, just as soon as I get the shrapnel out of this and a patch-weld," the medic muttered.

"Need any help, doc?" Bumblebee asked. And when Ratchet shot him a look, he shrugged, and said, "Since I'm at knee level already. And I can do a pretty mean jury-rig – get right around the burnt out stuff and recalcitrant bullets."

"Yes, I've seen the signature 'Bee bypass entirely too often." For a moment, Ratchet seemed to be weighing pride against prudence, but in the end, pride bowed. "No wisecracks," he said, adamantly, and the smaller robot shook his head.

"Wouldn't dream it," he said, and seemed actually to mean it, as he cast an eye over the latest casualty of a war that should've ended yesterday. Then: "Mikaela, you want to maybe find somewhere else to stand, just in case I do pop an energon line. Only for awhile, though: this shouldn't take too long."

"I'll just be outside then," she said, retreating out of the garage while Bumblebee flicked his headlights on and leaned in to see what he could find buried in Ratchet's gears.

"Smart girl," Ratchet said, and then said over his shoulder: "Meantime, _you_ can sit and conserve power until I have time to deal with you!" And then, as an afterthought: "Sir."

"Yes, Ratchet." Optimus Prime didn't even bother to argue, just sank down and leaned his back against the corner of the garage. He gave her a nod as she came to join him. "Mikaela," he greeted her. "How are you today?"

"Ok, I guess," she said and shrugged, staring briefly down at the broken little 'bot before averting her eyes. "We could hear the gunfire. What happened back there?"

"We are not entirely certain," Prime replied, contemplatively worrying at a burned patch of metal just below what in a human would have been his collar bone, courtesy of Megatron's literal parting shot. Mikaela could see some shorted out and blackened wiring where the energy discharge had pierced all the way through, and following the scorch marks as they radiated outward, also at the juncture of his left shoulder. "The preliminary report came from some of the soldiers stationed in Bravo sector, which is west of the streets we were on yesterday. They said they were under fire from another Cybertronian, though they reported no match in form, size or armament with any of the data we had given them on Barricade or any other Decepticon that we knew of as regularly affiliated with Starscream's company."

"So he wasn't even shooting at you at first? He was going after our guys?" Mikaela frowned.

"Strangely, yes. My arrival changed that, but it also drove him back inside some buildings." Prime made a soft noise, as of frustration. "That fight wouldn't have lasted half as long, save that a 'bot that size can find many more places to hide that I can't reach without doing severe damage to city property. Lennox's teams had to do most of the hunting. I had them flush him into a blind alley off of Des Moines Street where Ratchet and I blocked him in.

"We tried communicating, but as I said, he didn't seem to understand us and I fear may have taken the attempt to force a digital link as a threat. He opened fire – I caught the plasma discharge, Ratchet took a clip from the machine gun, and Sergeant Epps's team took him down with a couple of grenades and sabot rounds at point blank range. He wasn't heavily armored – the blasts probably compromised his spark chamber immediately." Prime shook his head. "We still do not know why he chose to attack, particularly once the odds turned so heavily against him."

"Is Sergeant Epps all right?" Mikaela asked, worriedly.

"He is unhurt, as is Captain Lennox," Prime assured her.

"And you really don't know where this robot came from?"

"No."

Mikaela bit her lip, glancing back over her shoulder at the city in ruins. "Do you think," she asked, "that there are many more out there?"

"It is hard to say," Prime replied.

"But you think there are," she pressed.

The Autobot leader gazed at her a moment, then nodded. "Yes."

If ever there were bad news to be had… Mikaela folded her arms across her chest, chewing gently on her lip as she considered the unhappy possibilities. "What happens now?" she asked at length.

"That depends in part on your people – on all of Earth's residents. We recognize the danger you have been put in due to our presence here, and we will do all that we can to shield you from any revenge Starscream might devise," the Autobot commander said firmly. "But it is not clear yet how to proceed. Your world is riven by factions and we must consider above all how to assist you in defending yourselves without allowing ourselves to be used by any of these factions." He paused and shook his head. "Not the simplest of tasks! But we will come to some arrangement in time."

"But you are going to stay here. On Earth?"

"For a time at least, and permanently if we can come to a reasonable accommodation with the powers of your world. Barricade and Scorponok are still at large, and we should be available to intercept them as swiftly as possible. Beyond that, we could not risk settling on one of your other planets until we had a functional passive alert and tracking system that would cover at least the inner belt of your star system. Otherwise, if the Decepticons returned, and we were settled elsewhere, we might be far out of position to aid you in time. And," Prime mused, "since we haven't the raw materials or facilities to fabricate such a system, we'll have to find some way of trading for them, which brings us back to the rather delicate political situation..."

Mikaela made a soft noise in the back of her throat. She wasn't one to watch the news – she most often found it irritating and fake and filled with people who smiled way too much to be trusted – but even she knew a little of what was going on in the world. And so she knew there was a lot of distrust right now, a lot of fear that with the war in Iraq, the U.S. was back to the bad old days of fighting for empire, not for freedom, and of course, everybody else was probably busy stuffing skeletons into their own closets and making out like bandits on get-out-of-jail-free cards. Her dad had taught her that.

"As soon as something's gone wrong, you can bet that everyone else is gonna start checking their backs, looking to see who has dirt on who and how much he can sell, how much he can get away with, 'specially if an unspoken rule's been broken. In crime and politics, you can count on it," he'd told her.

_Where's the 'happily ever after all the bad stuff_'? she wondered, dispiritedly. Where was that supposed to fit in? It was funny, but in all the movies, whether the aliens were good or bad, when they came to earth, everybody sort of united, as if nothing seemed that big anymore in the face of alien life.

But the people who had built Hoover Dam and made little Simmonses weren't likely to think that way.

_And since when has life ever been that perfect?_ she berated herself. She didn't have a juvenile record because everything was fair in the world, after all. She and Sam and everyone else hadn't been thrown into a war zone because they deserved it. The Autobots might have saved them from Decepticon invasion, but people in power were always looking for a way to spin things, make them come out in their favor, whether they had earned it or not. No wonder Prime seemed a little preoccupied as he sat there, fingers still massaging gently around that burn hole. Mikaela frowned.

"Is that really bothering you?" she asked, pointing up at the injury.

"I've had worse," Prime replied.

Mikaela gave him a look. "Yeah, but is it _bothering _you?"

The Autobot commander gave her a measuring look. "I see," he said, after a moment, sounding amused, "that Ratchet has instilled a lamentable suspicion in you already."

From the depths of the garage, a resounding and sardonic "Ha!" could be heard, then Bumblebee's voice drifted out to them:

"Wouldn't count on that fantasy, sir. She's hard-wired. The doc just encouraged – all right, all right!" Bumblebee backtracked quickly, no doubt in the face of a threatening glare or perhaps an arc welder. "He just let her have the space to show what she's got."

"Indeed?" Prime considered this information, turning a rather weighty gaze on her.

Mikaela shrugged. "Just doing what my dad taught me to do – which doesn't always work for you guys, but Ratchet's kept me from breaking 'Bee so far." She gave a slight smile. Just because politicians were rotten didn't mean everyone had to be. "Besides, you pretty much saved us..."

"That honor goes to Sam," Prime corrected quietly.

"Still," she insisted; "We wouldn't have known what to do if you hadn't come along. That makes us pretty much even."

"Then if that is so, you don't owe us anything," the Autobot commander reasoned, still watching her as if to see how she would react. "You could petition to return home – I am certain the request would be accommodated."

Which might actually be true, she supposed, though she sort of thought it unlikely anyone would want to deal with one displaced high schooler when there was so much else to deal with. But Lennox had been able to see about having someone go check on her and Sam, and he _was_ making sure her ambulance bill was covered. He seemed like a nice enough guy.

_Maybe he could get someone to take me home or get me a bus ticket or something to get past the road blocks out there,_ she thought, feeling the sudden stirring of hope, to say nothing of homesickness. She could get out of all of this mess and go home to her friends and her own room and bed and just _sleep._ Like, for a week, the way she was feeling. No more phone calls home. No more worrying Grandma Lori. There would even be a shower with soap and shampoo. It would be heaven.

So why wasn't she springing to try Lennox? There was a whole city in ruins out there, filled with frightened, desperate people, all of whom probably would jump at the chance to leave if they could. Even if they lived in Mission City, they'd probably go for it – anywhere but here, so long as it felt safe. Safe could count as home, after all, and wasn't that what everyone wanted? _Yeah, wouldn't we all like to go home?_ Mikaela thought, as she stared up at Optimus Prime.

"I'm gonna be grounded for life when I get back – probably won't see a car for a year. Might as well earn it," she said, and couldn't quite suppress the nervous little laugh. And: _God, could I sound any more self-absorbed?_ she wondered, appalled. Every time things got serious, whether it was between her and her grandma or her and her dad or her and a boy, it went one of two ways: either she just bluntly said whatever she thought, and there was a fight, or else she laughed it off.

Neither of which were really going to work now. For one thing, she didn't want to say this the wrong way, and she really didn't feel like laughing right now. For the other, she was standing in the middle of a group of Autobots who might not get what she was trying to say. Ratchet, especially, had that occasional literalism issue. So she tried again.

"Look, seriously," she said, feeling rather uncomfortably earnest and, well, _small_, "I don't mind helping out, you know. Whatever Ratchet's ok with, I'm up for it."

There was no reading the stillness of a robotic face, and in that moment, she felt the weight of inhuman difference as Prime gazed down at her in utter silence that just seemed to go on forever. But finally:

"Then," he said gravely, though his eyes gleamed rather too brightly for 'grave', "though I do not envy you Ratchet in top form, your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Mikaela."

_Thank God!_ But before a relieved Mikaela could think of a suitable response, the object of gentle humor, sporting a new set of welding seams, emerged from the garage to take issue with it.

"So you're looking to be off duty for forty-eight hours, instead of thirty-six, is that it?" the Autobot medic demanded of Prime. Limping just slightly still, he took a quick scan of his commanding officer.

"You're lucky your armor is as heavy as it is – our mystery 'bot burned off a good few layers of metal, and there's some damage to cabling from the bleed-over, but nothing to add significantly to pre-existing injuries. Your molecular circuitry should be able to regenerate most of that without much assistance, if you'll just give it something to burn. Otherwise, no neural circuitry damage, no leaks – everything still capped. Excellent." He considered Prime a moment, then turned and fixed an appraising, intent stare upon Mikaela. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then: "Whatever I'm 'ok with,' is that it?" he asked, abruptly.

"Well... yeah. Sure," she replied, a little hesitantly, uncertain what to make of that stare, even as Ratchet's motor purred soft, smug challenge.

"All right, then you've got Prime," he said, and when she gaped slightly at him, said with ruthless assurance: "It's nothing you haven't done yet. Do what you can with the debris and clear out damaged wiring. Bumblebee can talk you through wiring bypasses if necessary; the rest I'll have to see to." Ratchet shook his left arm out into that rotary saw again. And seeing both his patients and Mikaela still staring at him, shook his head and grumped, "Excitement's done for the day. This is a repair bay, however primitive – you either work, or you get worked on, or you get out. Clear?"

"Clear, doc," Bumblebee replied, sounding not at all chastised. "Mikaela?"

"Working," she replied, though she frowned as she looked up at Prime. "Um, anybody see a ladder...?"

* * *

The afternoon passed swiftly into evening, and evening into night. During that time, Mikaela had paused only to gulp more aspirin and grab a quick dinner, and otherwise, she did as Ratchet asked. In the process, she had discovered that when not hanging from bridges or on the run from helicopters, Prime made a far more stable platform than any ladder. Either he was simply a more accommodating patient than Bumblebee, or else his injuries were simply less severe and so less bothersome – he never flinched or complained, and bore with her efforts graciously. 

At length, however, Ratchet arrived to appropriate her services, and to chase his commander off to recharge. "She can't see in this light, and you're going on close to sixty hours without recharge. Twelve hours offline – minimum," he ordered.

"You need to rest, as well, Ratchet," Prime replied, making no move to depart just yet.

"And I will. Later."

"Ratchet – "

"You've spent your time haggling with Keller and his lot for introductions to the rest of the world's powers, and learning Chinese in between clearing wreckage with the Army Engineering Corps, running your sensor net to its limits to help cover the humans, and getting shot at, to say nothing of actually _getting shot_," Ratchet interrupted, voice low and flat. "We all do what is needed. I need to get 'Bee running by next week so he can spell you and Ironhide. And you need to recharge _now_ so that I've got until next week instead of tomorrow or the next day."

Given a confrontation between the proverbial immovable object and the unstoppable force, those less robust were well advised to get out of the way. Mikaela therefore eased back a step or two from commander and medic, who continued to stare each other down, each apparently waiting for the other to blink... or whatever Cybertronians did when they lost a staring contest. It was Prime who spoke, finally, though without taking his eyes from his medical officer.

"Ten hours," he said, in the manner of one making a final offer.

Ratchet shook his head. "That isn't neg – "

"Yes it is," Prime cut him off. "Ten hours, and I'm pulling Ironhide off patrol in twelve hours. That gives you two hours tomorrow morning to tell me exactly what you need in order to get Bumblebee functional in under a week." That, at least, stilled what clearly would have been a fairly violent protest. Assured he had his medical officer's interest as well as attention, Optimus continued: "After those two hours, you are off-duty. You _will_ shut down for at least six hours, and if you agree instead of submitting to an order, I won't leave Bumblebee with the timer."

Ratchet's eyes narrowed. "You think we can get anything from any lab on Earth that's going to cut those repair hours down?" he demanded, skepticism clearly warring with hope.

"I've no doubt of the medic, and as for the equipment, you might be surprised," Prime replied enigmatically. Then: "You have ten hours. I'll hear from you in the morning. Mikaela – set him an example and rest when you need to. Good night to you both."

With that, Prime departed to find a parking place, leaving her and Ratchet to themselves and their work. For Bumblebee had gone into recharge mode at least an hour ago, on the medic's orders, and somewhat to Mikaela's surprise, 'Bee hadn't put up much of a fight about it. Then again, as she stretched, cracking her back and her neck, and wincing over sore muscles, she supposed that being injured was tiring no matter what you were made of.

Warm air set stray strands of hair dancing about her face as Ratchet's vents cycled just above her in what qualified as a pretty gusty sigh. Mikaela glanced up and saw the Autobot medic standing and surveying the work of the afternoon, which had mainly consisted of him disassembling Jazz, piece by piece, and updating inventory, while passing off more basic repairs to Bumblebee. Now, though, Ratchet turned to the little green robot still lying in the corner where Prime had carefully deposited him earlier.

"More inventory," he said heavily, then glanced at her. "Pull some gloves on and bring your toolkit. I've already extracted whatever energon he had in his system and cleared the tubing and injectors. Whatever was dashed about his parts has already bonded by now. It should be safe enough for you to work on him."

When Mikaela had done as he asked, the two of them knelt down to examine the remains. "I told Prime I'd look for a flux inducer, so we'll start there. If I find it, I'll try extracting data from it; if not, I'll help you with disassembling him – you might as well learn the basics, and this looks to be your best opportunity, given the state of his armor," Ratchet said over a rather disapproving sounding growl from his motor. "Thin as it was, he had no place in any sort of firefight!"

Whatever Ratchet's opinion of the robot's armor, it was still nothing Mikaela could easily breach, even with a crowbar, and particularly not the cranial covering. That took a laser-scalpel, but Ratchet was quick about it and before long, he was directing Mikaela on an exploration of the cybernetic brain thus exposed. "What are we looking for?" Mikaela asked, gazing with some trepidation at the intricate 'organ.'

"It's a keychip – size of your nail or smaller, mostly a cluster of capacitors and re-emitters. It should be inserted into the transponder unit itself or else located right below it, on the line that connects the transponder to your comm signal processor. The transponder is usually toward the front of the upper cortex, on the underside. You'll recognize it by the double set of coils. See that port? Start there."

"I take it," Mikaela said, as she began digging carefully through a sort of dense, translucent mesh woven around, it seemed, innumerable microprocessors, battery-like structures, and support structure for all of it, "that this inducer is something added in?"

"It's standard equipment for Cybertronians designed for recon and infiltration, or who end up taking on those tasks. Depending on the 'bot, it may be original to him or it may be an addition; if it's an addition, it'll be external to the transponder."

"So 'Bee's got one of these things?"

"Mm hm. He and Jazz were both fitted out with them," Ratchet replied, without taking his eyes from Mikaela's progress. "Aim for that smaller mass – that's a comm relay cluster. It'll be close to the signal processor."

"And this will tell you who he is?"

"Maybe. I doubt it – I'm already seeing quite a bit of damage, here, probably from the inducer overloading. No, that doesn't look very hopeful," the medic said unhappily.

"Is it this?" Mikaela asked, after rooting about a little longer. Gingerly she extracted a small, brittle piece of plastic and metal, charred and twisted by some sort of power surge, and dropped it into Ratchet's outstretched hand.

"No, that's actually a part of his vocalizer. Keep looking – it should be in that area."

"It's really kind of a mess," Mikaela reported after a few more minutes of searching, and finding nothing but blackened, unidentifiable filaments and warped metal. She shook her head. "I can't tell anything from anything else."

"Slagging grenades must've overloaded his surge breakers," Ratchet muttered, easing her gently out of the way so he could take a closer look, bringing up his scanners. But the holo-imaging that floated overhead showed an indistinct, meaningless jumble, so far as Mikaela could tell. Ratchet seemed to try a couple of different scans – the image wavered, broke up, formed anew and differently, but the glyphs along the sides just ran without settling or else blinked helplessly. With a low growl, he switched the scanner off. Uncapping a laser, he made a quick, neat incision and then began digging through the charred mass himself. It wasn't long, however, before he sat back on his heels.

"Damn," he murmured, sounding genuinely surprised.

"You can't find it?"

"No. I can't find it." Ratchet gestured to the shorted-out, blasted mess. "I can find the transponder, the signal processor, vocal relays, or what's left of all of that. But I don't see an inducer. I don't see any evidence of one." He shook his head. "Damn," he repeated. And as if with that word the floodgates had opened on a rising tide of wrath: "Dammit! Primus fragging dammit to the slagging Pit fires!" he swore, and followed it up as he rose with something that apparently didn't translate but which sounded every bit as vicious.

"I don't get it. What's the matter?" Mikaela asked, staring up at him, surprised and uncomprehending, and just a little alarmed.

"He never had an inducer!"

"Ok," she said cautiously, after a few moments' reflection on this answer brought no enlightenment. "So... what does that mean?"

"It means he's not one of us," Ratchet snapped, turning away. "Not an Autobot or a Decepticon." A few long strides had him across the garage, where he planted his fists none too gently against the wall and leaned there, head down, staring over at Bumblebee, who, firmly locked in timed recharge, slumbered on peacefully oblivious. Ratchet hissed, vents flaring distressedly. "Fraggit, we just vaped an innocent!"

"But Ratchet, you can't know that just from his not having one of those signal distorters!" Mikaela protested. "You said _spies_ have them. What if he's not a spy?"

"Oh, he's no spy. He's not even a Neutral," the medic spat, disgusted. "If his neural net has more than fifty hours' use on it, and a basic fight-flight program, I'll let Ironhide replace my logic circuits with a crowbar. Primus!" Ratchet swore again, engine grinding out a pained undertone. "No wonder it went down like it did!"

"Wait, are you saying... he was made _here_?" Mikaela shook herself, glancing from Ratchet to the robot in partial pieces behind her. _Not possible,_ her brain told her, but then again... _Who would've thought Hoover Dam had a robot in cold storage?_

"Not made – not_ constructed_, or given any guidance programming at all. But sparked, yes. And here. It must've happened sometime during the battle," Ratchet reasoned, tautly. "When Prime and Sam hit the ground – or no, Prime would've noticed that. There must've been some other opportunity for an accidental discharge. It sparked him, woke him up in the middle of a firefight. He probably found some place quiet to hide, 'til some of your people approached on patrol and his programming kicked in." With that, Ratchet pushed himself away from the wall, and returned to stand over the wrecked robot, gears clicking and whirring, clearly agitated.

"We just weren't expecting that. It's been so long since the last time... we couldn't recognize what was right in front of us." The medic fell silent once more, staring at their latest casualty. "Doesn't matter that he didn't have an inducer," he murmured, finally. "We'll still never know what he might've been or done. Primus, I don't need this right now!" He slumped a little, as if with exhaustion, eyes fading to a dull, dim blue. Mikaela bit her lip and looked anywhere but up. 'An innocent,' Ratchet had said, 'not even a Neutral,' and put their mystery 'bot in a class of his own; Mikaela felt her heart sink as unhappy realization slowly dawned.

_They just killed a kid._ A demented child, a kid with a gun, and destructive as perhaps only Cybertronians could be, but still a kid – maybe the very last child they would ever have. _Jesus!_ she thought, numbly. She watched as Ratchet squatted down once more, and the 'gauntlet' covering on the back of his hand popped up, and some sort of extension formed. Almost gingerly, the Autobot medic turned the 'bot's head to one side, then slid the extension into a neural port. Ratchet's eyes flickered once again, and he stiffened slightly. But he did not remain long connected. After only a few moments, he shook himself, a distressed rattle of vents and gears, then withdrew, pressing the panel back into place on his hand, though he continued to rub at it gently even as he reached down to pluck something from amid the wreckage. Mikaela watched as he rose once more, holding the piece up under his lights – a piece which looked like some sort of vaguely fiber-optic cube...

"Are you gonna use him for parts?" she found herself asking before she could think better of it.

"What?" Ratchet demanded, a little distractedly, still staring intently at the cube.

"Never mind," she said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly, for he lowered his arm and gave her a look that had nothing of patience in it whatsoever.

"Of course we'll use his parts," he snapped, voice sharp with his own frayed temper. A beat, then: "What do you mean 'never mind'?"

_Shit!_ How to get out of this one? "Nothing, I just thought – " she gestured slightly at the green robot " – maybe it's not a good time... to talk..."

"You're talking about disposal. Seems like as good a time as any," came the still rather snappish answer. And when Mikaela couldn't quite stop herself from flinching a little, he growled softly. "There's a lot to do still before dawn, girl – and I've no interest in games or guesswork right now."

Which, all right, deserved an answer. "I'm not playing you," Mikaela replied, with as much of quiet force as she dared use at the moment.

"Then what are you after?" he demanded, setting the cube carefully aside on the car-lift turned workbench.

"You're going to think it's really weird," Mikaela warned him. This garnered a distemperate _harrumph!_ "And maybe... insulting, sort of. I'm serious! Ironhide was insulted," she added, when Ratchet gave her a skeptical look.

"Ironhide finds chihuahuas insulting. Mikaela," Ratchet said tiredly, sounding still on the cross side as he knelt once more before the broken green form, "I appreciate your consideration, but consider in return that I'm not half as likely to shoot you as Ironhide and that frankly, at the moment, I doubt you can rival the insult that is _this._" He gestured to the body whose plate armor he had begun prying off with the help of a laser-cutter. Mikaela winced slightly. Ratchet made a frustrated sound and the laser-cutter flicked off. "_What_ is it, girl? Your system keeps choking on the edge of overdrive!"

Which demand effectively cut off all escape from answering – at this point, aggravated as he was, Ratchet clearly was not going to take refusal, anymore than he would put up with stalling. Nevertheless, Mikaela gazed at him, her lips pressed firmly together for a good long moment, before she finally answered, "It just... doesn't it feel not right not to keep anything sort of... separate? You know, together and... and not split up and recycled." The words came haltingly, in spurts, and in a small, hesitant, _discomfited_ voice that she almost didn't recognize the voice as hers. Maybe Ratchet didn't either, because he just stared at her, so that she found herself, in the face of that look, babbling on in a desperate hurry, "Don't you want to keep something that's really... him? Or Jazz?"

Ratchet seemed to digest this a moment. Then: "Jazz isn't those parts," he said, as if to someone he suspected of hallucination... assuming Cybertronians hallucinated. Indeed, the way he was looking at her, she suspected he was scanning her for brain damage as he spoke. "Neither of them are a pile of parts."

"I _know_ that," she replied, a little impatiently, "but – just because they are gone, shouldn't you keep something... safe? I mean, all that – " she gestured to the neatly laid out parts " – that's what they were for, I don't know, however long. But now that's all that's left." She shook her head, forestalling the objection she could sense had to be coming. "I _get_ the organ donation thing – I do, but... don't you want there to be _something_ left that's Jazz, or whoever? Because they're people, and people have their own bodies... that belong... to them...?"

She trailed off in the face of a rather deep silence from the Autobot who sat listening to her, while absently running a low-level laser over his damaged knee. "I don't think," he said at length, when she had quieted, "that you quite understand what that would mean to us. Do you know what sets most biological species apart from cybernetic ones?"

"What?"

"Waste," Ratchet declared. "Intelligent biological species as a rule are exceptionally wasteful – they live on worlds that are overfull of useless redundancies and tend to be fantastically ill-adapted and given to excess in all directions. It's a wonder to all of us that you tend to be the dominant form of life in the universe."

"_What?_" This time, she was sharp, confused and a little irritated by the patronizing non sequitur.

"So we see it. Cybertron might be a barren world by your standards, but it was a testimony to design. Not to say we haven't our excesses, or we wouldn't be where we are now, but that's a different story." Ratchet waved it off. "Point being, we look on a species like yours and we see waste. How many of the people who died two days ago will be used to further the lives of those in need? A tenth? Of that number, how much will be returned to the society that sustained them? Very little, from what I can find in a quick search of your databases.

"You say that a body belongs to a person, but we are nothing but a purposeless excess without the cohort that created us. Look at us! Our bodies were made for a purpose; the knowledge that comes of using them for that purpose belongs to all, and the skill we acquire is to be put to use for others – to sustain life. None of any of that belongs to us insofar as we are isolated beings. That would be..." Ratchet paused, seeming to search for the right words. "It would be nonsensical. Meaningless."

"But you're not just _tools_. I mean, you're not just what you're made to be," Mikaela interrupted, frowning. "You can't be! You're too..." It was on the tip of her tongue to say 'human,' but not only would that not go over well, she suspected, but it wasn't quite right either. Instead, she simply gestured to Ratchet, as she spoke. "Well, what sense does it make for an ambulance to be like you?" she challenged.

"Of course we're not just tools, and of course we aren't reducible to mere machinery, and no, it doesn't make sense for a medical transport to have my personality – that's an old argument that no one has been able to answer satisfactorily in the several million years it's been on-going," Ratchet said firmly. "But what we know in the mean time is that our _spark_ is unique, as is personality and the feel and content of a friendship – these are ours because of who we are, over and above purpose. But these things are in no danger of being any less our own if our parts are reused and the rest melted down to be recast for others.

"And insofar as our bodies are concerned," he continued, "what more fitting than to put the shell to the use for which it was designated, to take what your brother or your friend has learned and created and do with it as he intended – put it to good use? Jazz wouldn't _want_ to be kept the way you describe – he isn't _in_ a pile of useless or unused parts. When those parts are used, when we take on his memories to improve in the tasks he excelled at, or let the motor-memory that gets imprinted in neural and motor circuitry affect us – then we honor what those parts were to him, and how he was in them. But like this?" Ratchet shook his head. "This is nothing. He wouldn't want that – and we who are his cohort would not do that to him. He deserves better than that." A pause, then: "Do you understand?"

"I guess it makes sense." Mikaela folded her arms across her chest and shrugged slightly. "It still feels weird, though," she admitted, adding quickly: "No offense."

"I assure you your notion of perfectly useful land dedicated to housing perfectly unused and unusable bodies likewise remains very strange," the medic said heavily.

"What if you can't reuse somebody's parts?" Mikaela gestured to the green 'bot. "Isn't he too small for most of you?"

"We'll do the best we can, 'til we can get a proper repair bay built somewhere," Ratchet replied, frowning a little. "I hope Prime is right that your government may have access to technology beyond what's available on public record. That might help, if it could be shared..." The Autobots' medical officer shook himself, then said: "Until then, I've still got inventory, and only nine hours to do it in." He gave Mikaela a searching look. "You don't have to help if it bothers you to do this kind of work – I'm sure you could use the rest."

Mikaela thought about it a moment, but then shook her head. "No, I'll be ok."

"You're sure about that?"

"Yeah. I think... I think it's partly that it's a war," she said, as she came and sank down on her haunches, already reaching for a socket wrench. "We haven't had one here for awhile. Certainly never with aliens! It makes you think of things, like how it could've been you not coming back. And I guess... I never thought I'd ever have to deal with anything like this," she confessed, glancing up at him.

Ratchet grunted. "No one ever does," he said, as he materialized the laser-cutter again. "All right," he said, his manner settling at last back to that of a medic with a mission. "Let's get this done. Plate armor off first, and we'll start going through all his systems to see what's salvageable, so pay attention..."

But though Ratchet did his best to explain the form slowly being displayed in all its complexity before her, and although Mikaela did her best to listen and absorb it all, they had barely gotten started, it seemed, when Ratchet paused and turned toward the entry way of the garage.

"It's not another attack is it?" Mikaela asked, worriedly.

"No, it's Ironhide," Ratchet said quickly, even as headlights flashed twice, then went dark, only to reappear some seconds later at a much greater height. The weapons specialist ambled over and ducked down to poke his head into the garage.

"You two are still at it?" he greeted them. "Even Prime's down for the night!"

"Wonders occasionally happen," Ratchet replied blandly. Mikaela said nothing, just gave him a smile.

Ironhide grunted and nodded slightly at her. "S'pose so. You're looking a little more than tired, though, doc."

"Mmm, it's a long job. Speaking of which, aren't you supposed to be somewhere down in the city center?" Ratchet asked, adroitly changing the subject, Mikaela noticed.

"I'm on my way back – been out on patrol. Thought I'd stop in here, since I've done the same for every other post the Army's got set up."

"Quiet watch, then?"

"Pretty much. People aren't going near vending machines without backup, but so far, no casualties," Ironhide reported, dryly. Then: "What about you? Any news? We know who we're dealing with yet?"

Mikaela watched as Ratchet busied himself with scanning coolant lines for nonexistent leaks, and she held her breath. But after a moment, he said only, "Not yet. By morning, I'll have a report to make." Then, somewhat to Mikaela's surprise: "Right now, I think I've got to take an hour and some energon and recharge."

Ironhide stared at him, then glanced at Mikaela, as if hoping for some further explanation for unprecedented behavior. Mikaela simply shrugged. The weapons specialist made a surprised noise, but held himself to: "Speaking of wonders!"

"Just because the rest of you take such joy in getting yourselves slagged and stupid from exhaustion doesn't mean I have to," Ratchet said, a touch acerbically, as he took up one of the energon containers and a port of some sort popped open on the inside of his left arm. He inserted the nozzle end of the container, and Mikaela watched as the glowing liquid slowly drained. "Especially if Prime wants 'Bee back in commission in under a week, I've got to get some rest now or they'll both have to live with the disappointment."

"Under a week? Prime didn't take shot to the head, did he?"

"Not that I saw," Ratchet replied. "You know Prime – he has his reasons. Mikaela?"

"Hm?" She raised her eyes to his face.

"If you want to work on damaged parts, I'd suggest taking a look at our 'bot's engine. Call me if you encounter anything you can't handle."

"You're sure?" she asked. "If you really need to sleep, I wouldn't want to wake you –"

"Well, I would," came the quick response, as Ratchet pulled the now-empty container free, closed the port, and crossed the garage to kneel down by 'Bee for a final scan. "Six more hours," he confirmed, then settled himself next to 'Bee, bracing his back against the wall. "Safe watch, Ironhide."

"See you tomorrow, doc," Ironhide replied.

"Good night, Mikaela."

"Good night," she replied, and watched as Ratchet's eyes abruptly went dark.

"He's gonna run himself dry one of these days," Ironhide rumbled, gruff, exasperated tone not quite covering his concern. "He's always like this, after a battle."

"Mm." Mikaela pursed her lips as she stared at the Autobots' medical officer.

"So what about it? You going to work or rest?" Ironhide asked.

"I don't know," Mikaela confessed, then glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly ten-thirty. "I am kind of tired, and I need to call home, now that I've got some quarters."

"You could always hook up Jazz's comm unit; might be a good idea generally, if you're ever the only one online here and need to get a hold of Lennox or whoever's patrolling."

"Um, think I'll just use the pay phone tonight," Mikaela declined. For despite Ratchet's explanation, she still didn't feel quite comfortable with just commandeering parts of former Autobots whenever she needed them. But Ironhide was right, it probably was a good idea, as she thought back over what Prime had told her. "Ironhide? Do you think Starscream's gonna be back soon?"

"Wouldn't be Starscream if he weren't," came the immediate, confident response.

"And the others? Barricade and the other guy...?"

"Scorponok. Yeah, they'll show up eventually."

"Even though there's nothing left to fight over?"

"There's always revenge."

"That's what Prime said," Mikaela sighed. Then: "They aren't gonna let us go, are they?"

Ironhide's engine gave a soft growl. "They're Decepticons," he said, as if that were answer enough.

"Right." She closed tired eyes, and sighed again, running her fingers back through her hair.

"Mikaela?"

"I'm all right," she said automatically. And in the face of the unconvinced silence from the front of the garage, she wrinkled her nose and let her hands drop, opening her eyes once more. Ironhide, a dark shadow against the night, save for the glare of headlights and the glow of his eyes, seemed to hover like a shade on the threshold – which was impressive, for a being of his size. Mikaela couldn't help but smile a little. And:

"No, really," she said to the other's skepticism. "I'm fine. Just... I wasn't looking for this, you know?" She gave a rueful, slightly hysterical laugh. "I'm seventeen! I'm supposed to be worrying about tests and boys and getting into college and then affording it. But now there's this war we can't get out of, and there are aliens, and we never saw any of this coming, and the next thing I know, I'm doing autopsies on robots! Which isn't exactly on the job test! And I'm tired and gross and I miss Sam and I want to go home." She sighed. "And I've gotta at least call Grandma Lori, like I promised.

"I have to get back on my route," Ironhide said at length. "Keep an eye out, girl. If anything happens, give Ratch a shout."

"Will do." She watched as Ironhide straightened up and headed back toward the road without another word, and she frowned a bit. Then: "Ironhide!" she called after him.

Headlights flashed once more in her face, as he turned back toward her. "Yeah?"

"Sorry about that – I'm not complaining, or anything, I'm just... processing. I'll watch out for Ratchet and 'Bee and all of us. Be here all night, 'til it's, well, until it's... done, I guess. Yeah." And God, it was funny, how much you could slip under two letters like that! Funny, too, the things she said when she didn't even know, sometimes, really, why she had to say them. Or even what she was saying, for all it was somehow _right_, and she knew it. Like now.

Fortunately, in the darkened lot outside, there was a 'bot with an answer that could tell her the question, too.

"Course you will be," Ironhide replied, matter-of-factly, no doubt in the world. "'F' you were gonna walk out, you would've done it sooner. But you're still here."

"Yeah, yeah I am." Mikaela found herself nodding slowly.

"So." Headlights rose slightly as he shrugged. Case closed, she read that. Case closed, and confirmed, as he turned away, and she heard his voice drift back out of the night: "See you tomorrow – once Ratchet's back online, get some recharge, sis'."

It took her a minute – a good long minute before she realized what she'd been told, and by then, he'd already transformed, and all she could see was a set of retreating taillights. For a time, she just stood there stock still, pondering the strange feeling of having signed her life away without quite knowing it.

But then she shook herself. It wasn't getting any earlier, and she had to call her grandmother. She hunted through her pockets until she found the required number of quarters, then took herself out around the side to where the pay phone stood beneath its fluorescent lamp. She dropped the coins in, dialed, waited through the sounds of long-distance electronic ghosts, and the ring tone. And while she waited, she cast a glance out at the Peterbilt truck quietly at rest beneath one of the street lamps, and leaned forward 'til she could see Ratchet and 'Bee asleep in their corner. She smiled, and looked once more after Ironhide.

"G'night, bro," she said quietly into the night, just as the phone picked up. With vast relief, and a broad smile, without even waiting for a greeting, Mikaela said warmly, "Hi Grandma, it's Mikaela. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, but it's been a busy day, and I just want to say: I love you, I miss you, and I want to come home. But when I do, we've gotta talk... about family."

* * *

**Author's Notes **: 

So the amazing, plotless story has run its course. Thank you for staying with me, those who stayed. I can't pretend I'm doing more than winging it, here, but hopefully this was enjoyable as a gap-filler for the live action film, and hopefully, the ending isn't too obscure or horribly sentimental. All the stuff on Autobot attitudes towards their dead clearly violates the cartoons, but thanks to the film's silence, I can extrapolate from being to custom. Also, I know cartoon canon has Transformers drink energon, not 'inject', but, um, let's say it's faster this way? Also, although I do think Ratchet could use a drink at that point in the story, I was trying to stay away from having that line pop out and so wanted the visual image to avoid bringing it up.

Couple of 'thank you' notes: Thanks go to GreendEATHpop for answering a question that unfortunately didn't quite make it into the story. It just ended up working out better going a different route. The discussion of Ironhide's character was also much appreciated. I know he's most likely on the fringes of probable characterization, but I'm hoping that shoot-from-the-hip honesty in whatever he _does_ decide to address (so long as he has the option of reticence) constitutes a possible manifestation of his more trigger-happy gung ho personality.

Also, many thanks to JML, who reviewed anonymously to confirm my suspicion that Bumblebee shouldn't have been able to break car windows with any kind of radio equipment. I passed physics in high school, but there's a reason I don't do that for a living. Even when I think I'm right, I have no confidence in my inferences.

Speaking of things I have no confidence about, chemistry: I passed chemistry and promptly forgot most of what I learned. My efforts to fake it where Autobot fuel is concerned are all based on an admittedly shaky foundation in chemistry, _but I maintain that it is no more shaky than the one used by canonical writers_. Otherwise, it shouldn't be possible to come up with all or any of this:

transformers dot wikia dot com backslash wiki backslash Energon

Likewise, the stuff on transponders has a minimal factual basis:

www dot nvo dot com backslash natl backslash cookiesnotice backslash

Also, Wikipedia was useful.


End file.
